Class 




Book.'jfe2*££l^ 
Copyright N" /^-^O 

COPVRIGHT DEPOSIT 






By 
PAUL BAUMGARTNER 



FORT WAYNE BOX COMPANY 

FORT WAYNE, INDIANA 

1915 






Copj)rigKt 1915 

By 

Paul Baumgartner 



JUL 15 1915 



►GU401768 



CONTENTS 

1. Introduction Page 5 

2. Fore-word 10 

3. Oases 11 

4. The Tide 15 

5. "Woods of Indiana 18 

6. The Dogs of War 22 

7. The Corner in Wheat 32 

8. Hope 40 

9. To a Polyphemus Moth 42 

10. Music 44 

11. The Ironweed 46 

12. Night-fall 48 

13. "She Gave More Than They All" 51 

14. Invitation to Poetical Thought 53 

15. Star-voices 65 

16. After Death 68 

17. Epiphany 71 

18. Aims and Needs 74 

19. Wistfulness 76 

20. The Seven Searchers 81 

3 



INTRODUCTION. 

It is with some diffidence that I attempt to break 
in on the good pleasure of the reading public in pre- 
senting this volume of verse. Perhaps nothing has 
induced me more, to take this step, than Carlyle's 
exhortation when he says, ''Speak that which is in 
you. ' ' This advice, if literally taken, could not well 
be followed at all times, for it is an important lesson 
of life to learn when to remain silent. Yet, does 
not the tree, after absorbing the nutrition of the soil 
and of the atmosphere, yield to us a largess of 
sweet blossoms and rare fruit, so fine that it can not 
be excelled, even in the imagination, by all the magic 
of the genii of the Arabian Nights. Should, then, 
the mind of man, reveling in the profusion of rich 
growth-opportunities and soul-sustenance, not also 
by proper assimilation, bring forth, or attempt to 
bring forth, some flower or fruit, however modest? 
If you permit me to follow up this comparison, I 
wish to say that the food of the mind, like that of the 
tree, is often received in a crude, jumbled sort of a 
way. The important step comes after it has been 
taken into the system, in the change it undergoes 

5 



there. This process of change is accomplished in 
the mind by classifying, generalizing and musing 
on the things which the senses gathered. The ancients 
ascribed this musing to the work of immortal beings, 
called Muses. If, in the following verses, I shall ad- 
dress these, I beg the reader to conceive that I merely 
appeal to the workings of the mind for a clearer 
apprehension. I have no acknowledgments to make 
to any heathen divinity. But, right here, I wish to 
make a higher acknowledgment. Even if the en- 
vironments of the tree were perfect and the well 
adapted soil, the deep roots, the graceful branches, 
the dainty leaves, the well-channelled fibre, all con- 
tributed to make a fruitful tree, and yet the God- 
given rain and sunshine from above were withheld, 
all would avail nothing. 

It has been said that we, all, are poets and that 
we, all, desire in our inmost nature to express some- 
what of spiritual or intangible. This Ideal world of 
the poet is often regarded as fanciful and visionary ; 
yet it is more true than that which we call real, and 
which we perceive with our outward senses and brush 
up against in life. We could not say that the human 
body, with which we have so much to do in life, is 
more important than the soul which inhabits it. 



Thus the Ideal becomes the Real; and the 
material part of the universe with which we have 
so much traffic here, is only the curtain drawn by 
solicitous mother-hands to shield her child from too 
much light; or the toys and nursery things which 
she has placed within our sight and within our reach, 
that we may be fed and pacified : and the sound and 
rhythm of nature is but the crooning of her lullaby 
sOng in the gloaming, in order that we may learn to 
know her voice and her image, and grow more to- 
wards her love ; while behind and over it all stands 
the Eternal. 

Taking this view of it, poetry becomes impor- 
tant, so that we can not well ignore it. The person 
who brushes aside the claims of music and poetry, 
as not being practical enough for this life, is like 
one who disdains the pansy that grows at his feet, 
or the song of the bird in the meadow, or the light 
from the stars because they bring in no dollars and 
cents. 

Poetry should elicit as much attention from the 
mind and heart of man as music. They are sisters, 
that, hand in hand, have come down through the 
haze of the ages to meet us of the modern day. And 



the perfume of God's atmosphere is still clinging to 
their airy raiment, and from their lips come snatches 
of the child-song that He sang at the cradle of the 
human race. As the reel of life runs quickly we can 
dimly see that the pansy is not earth-made, the star- 
light is not star-made ; the eternal threnody of Job 
came not from Job's heart, although he was swayed 
by it; the up-reaching psalms of David are not the 
deep heart-yearnings of David alone ; the apostle did 
not construct the mooring-lines of faith and fasten 
them to the foundation of heaven, although he 
grasped them with strong hands ; but these are all 
fragmentary strains of eternity's oratorio, which He 
who said, ''Consider the lilies", fain would have us 
understand. 

I will say just one word regarding the subject- 
matter of the book. The change, or we may call it 
transformation, that took place in the lives of the 
Seven Searchers may seem to the reader as being too 
abrupt and unwarranted, in view of the variable 
and sporadic light that came to them from the in- 
structions of Rally. But only a few of Rally 's visions 
and adventures are here recorded. If they were all 
brought to paper they would make another book as 



large as this. For the present, they lie in cleavage, 
unquarried. At some future time, at the instance of 
my kind readers or at the call of leisure, perhaps 
they might be dug up. 

PAUL BAUMGARTNER. 

Decatur, Indiana. March 27, 1915. 



FORE-WORD 

Love is not dead. Though all the world goes 
grieving 

For fondest treasures that have slipped away; 
Though fast approaching, bribeless night is weaving 

A silent shroud to cover up the day ; 
Though sadly, all, they seek their lowly bed, 
Love is not dead. 

Love is not dead. Though valiant youth is dying ; 

Though war mows down a thousand in one place; 
And where the deadly missiles still are flying 

A woman gropes to find her lover 's face ; 
Though hundred fields with blood run reeking red; 
Love is not dead. 

Love is not dead. Though servile Pilates flourish 
And envious Herods still usurp the Light ; 

And though the meek, eternal faith you cherish 
Seems swallowed up in scoffing and in night ; 

Break away and boldly calvary's mountain tread, 

Love is not dead. 



10 



OASES 

Somewhere veiled in life's blue morning, 
Somewhere on that golden shore 
Lies a spot, so sweet, enchanted, 
Memory turns to o'er and o'er. 
Often when the heart is sinking 
Or when filled with bliss most rare, 
Fancy on retreating pinions 
Makes a flight and lodges there. 

Somewhere in love's sacred memory. 
Somewhere on that dreamy shore 
There's a face so rare and radiant 
Memory turns to evermore. 
Sometimes when the heart is stricken 
Or for higher joys does yearn. 
To this face of love-crowned glory 
Fancy ever will return. 
11 



Somewhere in life's hoarded treasury 
Glints a gem of priceless worth, 
And to learn to know its value 
Above all the things of earth ; 
And to purchase this one jewel 
With your lifework as its price 
Will exalt your soul forever 
To the realms of paradise. 

Somewhere in life's storied gallery 
Hangs a painting where the heart 
Feasts away its homesick hunger, 
Lingering o 'er the god-like art ; 
And the votary whose exalted 
Spirit yields to its impress 
Ever after carries with him 
Floods of long, long happiness, 

12 



Somewhere in the mind's dominion, 

Somewhere on the glorious shore 

Stands, undaunted by time's changes, 

Life 's ideal, evermore ; 

No iconoclast can ravage 

And no sacrilege can scathe, 

It defies the fitful spirit 

Of man's ever- varying faith. 

Somewhere on the shores eternal 
Gleams a strand that does excel 
All the far-famed ancient, classic 
Fragrant fields of asphodel ; 
Past the new, and past the old, and 
Past the stars man strains his eyes, 
If perhaps those realms elysian 
To his wistful vision rise. 

13 



Somewhere in the shadowy future 
Beckons the long sought for goal 
Towards which goes out the cherished, 
Pleading silence of the soul. 
And in patience man will labor , 

And through long, long years will bide, 
The supreme, triumphant moment 
"When he will be satisfied. 

Turn, dear soul, back to the common, 
Worldly, week-day things of life, 
But hold fast in silent patience 
Through time 's ever-shifting strife ; 
Still hold fast in pleading muteness 
To these higher things you prized, 
For in fullness, somewhere, sometime, 
Each one will be realized, 

14 



THE TIDE 

Old Neptune, in the watery deep, 
Lies on his bed of sea-weed soft; 

Anon, he grumbles in his sleep 
And tosses his huge limbs aloft. 
And turns himself. 

His broken sleep is void of ease; 

Though monarch of the ocean wide. 
Surrounding border-enemies 

Still, harassing him on every side. 
Keep him astir. 

Scarce has he snatched an hour of rest 
When comes the call, "To arms again! 

Your land-foes from the east or west 
Encroach upon your great domain!" 
The giant wakes. 

He shakes his bristling locks and calls 
In storm-shrieks to his myrmidon ; 

They, issuing from dark-heaving halls, 
He, with his trident, goads them on, 
Ready for battle. 

15 



Then with a swift, tumultuous motion 
The glittering armies land-ward pour; 

Moving the water in the ocean 

A thousand miles ; from shore to shore 
The tide sets in. 

Along the beach the breakers creep 
Like little spies to feel the way, 

Like picket-guardsmen from the deep 
Sent out to see how the land lay, 
By the watery host. 

The sea makes onslaught at the land; 

Fleet-footed billows, never slack, 
Go galloping break-neck o'er the sand 

And then retreat for a new attack ; 
Eager for the fray. 

The mighty waves with rush and roar 
Leap into battle thick and fast, 

Each mightier than the one before, 
Each breaking higher than the last; 
The great sea moans. 

16 



As if some mighty fortress were 

Assaulted by a mighty foe, 
And up the rampart comes the stir 

Of surging armies from below, 
Pressing to the front. 

Now comes the cavalry of the deep ; 

Their armor and their sabres flash 
Like burnished steel, and high they leap 

With foaming bit into the clash. 
The fight is on. 

Thus column after columao. roll 

And hurry glorious to their doom — 

Low and deep you can hear the toll 

Of the signal bells or the cannon's boom. 
The tide is in. 



17 



WOODS OF INDIANA 

Howe'er dull my song, my theme 

Is too precious 'most I deem, 

Just for poesy and dream. 

'Tis of cool sequestered places 

In the Hoosier woods, where traces 

Linger of primeval graces. 

Talk of groves with beauty sweet; 

There's no rival can compete. 

From the Maine woods to Montana, 

With the woods of Indiana. 

There the trees, my loved ones, grow 

Not in geometric row, 

But no gardener could bestow 

One more charm, or make a change 

That would not the grace derange 

Nature in her wondrous, strange, 

Secret and mysterious ways 

Through the long, long years and days 

Platted out in her arcana 

In the woods of Indiana. 

18 



Some will find their heart's devotion 

In the dance's mazy motion, 

In the whirl of social notion; 

Some will find their joy sublime 

In the music's measured time 

Or in rhapsody of rhyme; 

But I leave them rave and revel 

Out their joys on lower level, 

For I find my soul's nirvana 

In the woods of Indiana. 

Beech-tree, pied with grey and cream, 
Moss-beds, filmy fairy-dream, 
Iron-weed with purple gleam, 
Speak, in what your claims consist 
That my whole heart's love enlist, 
For your magic, I insist. 
Is the rarest of the earth 
From great forest in the north 
To sweet southern savanna 
In the woods of Indiana. 

19 



How my trees do love each other! 
Elm and ash and maple smother 
"With embraces one another, 
Walnut, linden, sycamore, 
Hickory, linked with treasured store 
And with child-hood's sylvan lore — 
But the years change all, forsooth, 
Save the never-dying youth 
Of kind nature's sweet arcana 
In the woods of Indiana. 

Midst the groupings of these bowers 
Grow the modest woodland flowers, 
Strewn in clusters and in showers. 
Bluebells and anemone 
In their sweet simplicity 
Have a cheering charm for me. 
Weary, oft my way I wended 
Hither, where I was befriended 
And was feasted on sweet manna 
In the woods of Indiana. 

20 



Dainties, seasoned with incenses 
Here my hidden host dispenses 
To refresh my famished senses. 
As I banquet, never-tiring 
Do I listen to inspiring 
Music that the birds are quiring 
And I yield to soft content, 
Infinite abandonment, 
'Mongst the flora and the fauna 
Of the woods of Indiana. 



Yes, these are my friends of old, 
And I sink on mellow mould 
Flecked with dancing shade and gold, 
And my vision drinks the reaches. 
Avenues of oak and beeches 
While my silent soul beseeches 
Nature ne'er to break the thrall — 
Cerulean blue is over all — 
And my spirit finds nirvana 
In the woods of Indiana. 

21 



THE DOGS OF WAR 

What sound comes from the fruitful plains of 

Flanders — 
What mutterings from Poland's ravished realm — 
What clangs of clashing tumult from the Balkans — 
What out-break, long-suppressed, now seems to 

overwhelm 
The muse-loved dells and home-crowned hills of 

Europe ? 
Alas! too true, they are the dreaded hounds; 
The dogs of war have now outgrown their prison, 
Have burst the bars and broken down the bounds 
And with their red-mawed hayings and alarum 
They run at large. Like flames will lick and sweep 
Through some doomed city when the wild and 

wanton 
Winds cause the angry brands to spread and leap; 
So do they over-run the peaceful hamlets; 
Pack answers pack and fiercer grows the race; 
Their ominous howl awakens all the echoes 
Of long-forgotten wars. Time would efface 

22 



And fain would smooth the bygone age's ravage; 
But they stir up anew the ancient fight 
And sniff along the former battle-fosses 
To dig their gruesome contents up to sight. 
They howl to glut their late-developed hunger 
On earth's most precious product — human life. 
And men will listen to the war-dog's clamor, 
In their prone hearts is born desire for strife, 
This wild stampede is rhythm to their senses, 
This restless cry is music to their ears. 
And they will drop their peaceful, homelike labor 
And things accomplished by the thrift of years 
And catch the warlike spirit of these demons 
And flock along the trail from near and far 
"While thousands upon thousands leave their loved 

ones 
And follow the relentless dogs of war. 
Love can not hold. The kiss is interrupted 
E'en in its early bliss. The sunny face 
Of childhood, than which there is nothing sweeter. 
The lingering love-look and the fond embrace, 
The aged sire's pleading or the mother's 
Strong grief, who knows who reared this food for 

war 

23 



And what the price, and what a useless, wasteful 

Thing that it all is; all these can not bar 

Or bid men's war-enthralled souls from combat, 

They fain would follow and will twine around 

The sleek and glossy throats of their seducers 

Some fluttering motto with some thrilling sound, 

As heroism, bravery, fame or glory. 

They go, perhaps fall wounded, then they pray 

For life to quickly pass and to relieve them, 

For laggard death to hasten on his way. 

Tell then, pensive muse, are they the offspring 

Of savage race reared in some nether cave 

Of Tartarus, whence they at intervening 

Decades will issue and make man their slave? 

"What is their pedigree and from what kennel 

Spring they that can three continents embroil? 

Are they the self-same brood that led the ancient 

And prehistoric dweller on this soil? 

They are the ones, the self-same progeny 

That urged to carnage with inflaming cries 

In cave or jungle. They bayed at lUium 

When warriors fell and darkness veiled their eyes. 

They followed at the heels of Roman legions, 

Inciting their ambition. They also incensed 

24 



The hordes of hairy heathens from the north-land. 

And to the AUemanni they dispensed 

Their fury and their taste for sanguine slaughter. 

On this same soil, so many years ago 

That time became adult since then, attaining 

Its full majority, against the foe 

They led the bloody Merovingian ambush, 

The Saxon liegemen and their feudal lord. 

They painted to the knights in glowing colors 

The glory of their marriage to the sword. 

And when these hounds could mass a dozen armies, 

The Hun and Frank, the Moor and Muscovite 

Of Spanish troops, Burgundian phalanxes 

And hist them into battle's fiercest fight, 

Then would they hold high carnival and revel. 

And when they saw in bristling battle drawn 

Grim-visaged hosts and warriors wolfish-looking 

They breathed contention and they spurred them on. 

Then, clear-eyed muse, deep-searching one, reveal 
Where this blood-progeny is whelped and fostered 
And where they whine their earliest appeal. 
By whom is this prolific tribe first nourished? 
'Tis in the home, where in some careless nook 

25 



They are penned up and barred with good intentions 
And leashed with fine apologies. They look 
So frolicsome and harmless in their gambols 
And have a charm that fascinates the mind. 
For food the members of the household passing, 
Throw to them little spites and things unkind, 
And hates, all little wrongs and petty slanders, 
Injustice and malicious thought and deed. 
You then should see them thrive and grow and 

prosper ; 
Such food is what the greedy creatures need. 
And in all public places are some cages 
Devised to harbor specimens of these 
Firmly secured by bands of public honor 
And strong pretense of policy and peace. 
And there the passing public through the barriers 
Throw scraps of malice, hatred and ill-will 
And feed these thrifty scions of the ancient 
Arch-instigators to pillage and to kill. 
They watch them fletch their teeth with satisfaction 
At delicacies such as long-nursed grudges. 
Or jealousies, or power-abused tribunals 
"Where self-love and cupidity are judges. 
They feed them fragments of the throttled tenets 

26 



That said of old to man, ''Thou shalt not steal," 

And remnants of the broken creed that teaches 

To give to every man his due and deal. 

They throw in racial narrowness, sweet morsels 

Of hide-bound national intoleration. 

They toss them groans of good men, persecuted. 

Because they taught the way of man's salvation. 

And in the theatres and public forums 

Men keep these playful pets, with no design 

Except to see them grow and feast and flourish 

Upon the tribute offered at their shrine. 

And through the nations are these nursing kennels 

Where younglings of these dogs of war are reared; 

But they are all environed with strong fetters 

So strong, they say, that naught is to be feared. 

E'en in the churches where men preach of mercy 

Oft times are found in some secluded place 

Behind the chancel wall a nest full hidden 

And covered up with inconsistent — grace. 

Nor do they starve. In governmental buildings 

There oft is found a rabble of these pups 

Well kept in shackles made of super-dreadnaughts. 

The standing army, submarines and Krupps. 

They say that these are proof against an out-break, 

27 



And then around them all is placed a fence 

Of royal intermarriages and treaties, 

Peace-convocations and disarmaments. 

The dogs are fattened here on oily diet 

Of false diplomacy of court and state, 

On puffed-up pride and boastful show of power 

And lust for lands and seas, and wealth of state. 

Until these minions, growing strong and willful. 

Tug at and bend and break their prison bars 

And howl one to the other in their fury 

Forgotten echoes of a thousand wars. 

And like from many lands soft peaceful brooklets 

Converge their swollen floods to larger stream 

Until it grows in volume like a deluge 

And breaks through banks where homes and 

harvests teem; 
So have these dogs of war, now power-conscious. 
Spurned all confinement, broken down their ranch 
And swept o'er muse-loved, genius-favored Europe 
With their dissensions like an avalanche. 

Of thee, deep-thinking muse, I need no longer 
Inquire what the cause of war might be. 
Or who infused it, why men follow blindly, 

28 



Have thex not nursed it in its infancy? 

And fostered it in hearts and courts and councils? 

I need not plead of thee to show its cure 

Or to disclose where to begin prevention 

Of war; and bring a peace that would endure. 

But this, thoughtful-browed one, would I fathom 

And am not able. How can some men hold 

That there must needs be war to clear the path-way 

To higher life ; hold, they were from of old 

But birth-throes of a newer civilization; 

That there are other things more dear than life? 

'Tis true, the soldier's ebbing life when measured 

With other pawns demanded by such strife 

Is cheap. The sacrifice made by the living 

Is greater far. The evils in the wake 

Of glorious war appear like birds of carrion 

In a campaign against the soul and make 

A greater havoc than the deadly bullets. 

The aftermath of war, its spiritual cost 

In breeding vice, unthrift and use of liquor 

Is far more fatal than the battles lost. 

The yielding up of all to war's stern mandate. 

The child-mind stunted, family uptorn, 

The blighting seal on the pure souls of childhood, 

29 



The stamp of destiny of those unborn. 
And all the long, long years of dreaded payment 
Until men's earning limbs will have become 
Deformed and gnarled, his hands unshapely 

work-hooks 
And women's cheery singing will be dumb, 
Their supple bodies doubly bent with burdens. 
And child-faces, such as would court the light 
To linger, go with brow depressed and old-like, 
And minds endowed with atttributes of spright 
And fulsome growth remain un-wooed and dormant. 
Such are the wages which for war are paid. 
They might as well say, sin is necessary 
That good might be produced and right conveyed. 
They might as well say, that consumption's ravage 
Brings to the suffering patient better health, 
Or that starvation and the pinch of hunger 
Brings to its victim plenitude and wealth. 
Must then the dish be broken and the porridge 
Be spilt to find the children's hungry mouth? 
And does the grouse evade the winter's rigor 
By flying farther from the balmy south? 
Must then the weaver's shuttle speed so fiercely 
That it will set afire woof and weft? 

30 



And must life's rental so exceed life's income 
That all is spent and nothing will be left? 
Nay, war, like error, travels in a circle; 
This last is but the heritage of some 
Preceding ones and it will be the silent 
But certain cause of future ones to come. 
Philosophy may teach there must be warfare 
To break the old and readjust the new; 
Did not philosophy down through the ages 
Forever shift its tenets, change its view? 
And august wisdom falls in ruts of error; 
Some foremost sages but a year ago 
Contended that there was but one solution 
Of our own trouble with old Mexico. 
And that was war; no other course was open, 
That slaughter's fiery flag must be unfurled. 
Yet in some better way was it adjusted; 
The first time in the history of the world. 



31 



THE CORNER IN WHEAT 

On Exchange, one of the millionaires 

"Was bandy-ing; words with the bulls and bears, 

He was happy, for wheat was rising in price, 

Financial investments had come around nice ; 

So he said to himself, as he came down the stair 

And blew the smoke from his fine cigar, 

"I've got the bulge on 'em; I'll make them submit; 

For I have the means to buy all in the pit; 

I'll keep it longer; I'll make them pay more." 

And he left in his gilded carriage and four. 

That night a man with a heavy heart 
"Went by the street of the city's mart; 
Six children at home were yet to be fed; 
They were all so small and their mother dead. 
"Yes, when I had work I could keep them well 
But now they're in want and I can't tell 
What will become of these babes of mine, 
They have had no supper ; the clock strikes nine. 

32 



In the granaries are stored large masses of wheat, 
For those that have money there is plenty to eat." 
And a frozen fowl dangled under his nose — 
He snatched it and hid it under his clothes 
And his face towards the darkness he turned 
So no one could see how with shame it burned. 
When his conscience cried out and reproached 

him for it 
He answered, "Have mercy, I had to submit." 

That night, a girl, but a little child. 
With a piteous look so wan and wild, 
Walked out alone, half-starved, half-clad. 
While the wind blew fierce and the weather 

turned bad. 
Her father that evening had sent her out 
To ask for bread and to beg about; 
For times were hard and bread was high. 
He could get no work, howsoe'er he would try. 
So this little child walked out alone 
With her tender bare feet o'er the cold, hard stone. 

33 



Too timid to ask, she just walked on 
Hardly thinking how far she had gone, 
And she mused as she went, to herself she said : 
"0, had I some shoes and a piece of bread j 
They say in the country grow fields of wheat, 
Why is it then, we have nothing to eat." 
Her tears fell crystal on her breast ; 
She had lost her way, she sat down to rest; 
And Hunger and Cold in that dismal street 
In icy tones whispered: ''You must submit "- 
And still the wind with her curls would play 
When they found her cold and white, next day. 

In the insane ward a woman lay 

That night and raved her life away. 

She was a girl once, with a mien 

As sweet as any that may be seen ; 

She loved and married and few do start 

Into life's troubles with a stronger heart. 

Few hold, like she, through the wear of years. 

It is the story of eternal tears, 

34 



Of the super-human love of mother 
In her efforts to hold her own together. 
The stories recorded in chivalry's name, 
The deeds emblazoned on walls of fame, 
The legends of battle, the heroic tale, 
The vaunted glory around them would pale 
If human language the words would hold 
And the true story of "mothers" were told. 
And so this woman; she worked and toiled 
For the children's good. Though often foiled 
In her anxious task to guide and control, 
To keep them clean in body and soul. 
They had a home — and if no more 
The mother thought it worth dying for. 
But out of the depths came a specter, gaunt. 
Grim and insidious; his name is "Want;" 
And where he enters, money will measure 
And put on the market each sacred treasure. 
The mother plodded as woman plods. 
But found now against her many odds. 

35 



She failed — and she and hers were hurled 
Into the maelstrom of the world. 

That night, in a garret, dingy and dark, 

A pale-faced maiden was busy at work. 

Her hands were tired and her fingers numb, 

She had sewed all day for a paltry sum. 

So many shirts she must make each day; 

Her toil was arduous, meager her pay. 

She cauld hardly in decent clothes appear 

For money was scarce and bread was dear. 

In vain against hunger and cold she fought; 

Now something was ever crossing her thought; 

That evening, some women, bedizened and gay, 

Laughing and joking had passed her way. 

And while she was starving and naked and froze 

These women had money and ribbons and clothes. 

In this trying hour the tempter came — 

O, how she shrank from a life of shame. 

Must then her only possession go? 

Must her jewels be pawned and forfeited so? 

36 



That night a noble young man went wrong; 
The road to fortune had seemed too long. 
He, fitted out with brawn and brain, 
Had entered the ranks of life to gain 
An honest measure of success 
By dint of hard study and willingness 
To earn through merit a competence, 
And pay for a dollar a hundred cents. 
But on life's busy thorough-fare 
He noticed some that would get there 
By different means, on a shorter route; 
Who all time-honored ways would flout 
And ride them over; and they got returns 
By methods that only a trickster learns. 
Then they would boast and hobnob and jeer 
And speak about honesty with a sneer. 
He saw them prosper; the insolvent cheat, 
The watered stock, the corner in wheat. 
And plenty of blue air could they find, 
And they spurned the plodder, left behind. 
This made his strong ambition chafe; 

37 



He left his path for ways unsafe — 
He vowed to get rich at any cost — 
The dollar had won, the soul had lost. 

From the cold, bleak street a child, that night, 
Was carried by angels to gates of light; 
When, free from her suffering, she looked on 

the place 
A smile of glory came over her face. 
And a woman, with face in halo framed, 
Was there, with her mind restored, reclaimed. 
The recording angel his ledger took 
And he said: "I must balance this debit book 
And charge to each the proper amount — 
It is strange, but in the gross account 
Of this night's sins I find that others 
Are guilty of the sins of their brothers. 
They are forced into sin, if not enticed — 
No wonder the world has need of Christ." 
And the man of theft and the woman of shame 
He there absolved from much of blame; 

38 



And he made a charge to the millionaire 

Who had caused this misery and laid the snare. 

But after the angel's task was done 

With unerring figures for every one 

He wrote across every debtor's name: 

''Recommended for mercy." And he did the same 

Across the account of the millionaire 

For he said: ''He, too, was trapped in a snare." 




39 



HOPE 

Though, in autumn, fragrant bushes 
Broadcast all their beauty strew, 

KnoWj that spring's incipient blushes 
Bring their bud and bloom anew. 

Though, sometimes, a day of glory 
Turns to night of storm and rain, 

May not azure-browed Aurora 
Hail the sunlight's smile again? 

Even if a face of rareness 

Hardens, darkens, sad and stern, 

May it not resume its fairness 
And respond to love's return? 

And a heart submerged by sadness 
And by sorrow cleft in twain, 

Haply will return to gladness. 
All its bruises heal again, 

40 



Then, wherefore should sore repining 
Or despair the heart destroy — 

May be troubled days are twining 
Garlands of returning joy. 

Some auspicious star is ever 

Beckoning through time 's horoscope ; 
And the soul should wear forever 

Blossoms of perennial hope. 




41 



To a polyphemus moth, found by Ruth, clinging 
to one of the stone columns in front of the Decatur 
Library on June 15, 1914. 

Eare Loiterer, in hidden haunts you must have 

sought and found 
Each gem-thread of your costly robe, each grace-line, 

beauty-bound. 
And now to these environments, where at some 

strange behest 
Man, too, is ever seeking light-rays in a long, 

long quest, 
You come; perhaps attracted by some gleams of 

hard-learned art, 
Which man essays to utter here and there in 

fragment part; 
You come and nonchalantly perch upon this carved 

facade 
And quite discourage man-made art by that which 

nature made. 
You shame an age's effort; like when all the wealth 

of lore 
And utmost human knowledge garnered from the 

years of yore 

42 



By Rabbi's prized and guarded from iconoclastic 

doubt, 
Was by a simple child-lip spoken Christ-word 

clear put out. 
Was it your own heart's love-instinct that was so 

true to sift 
The soft and filmy filaments to weave your vesture 's 

weft? 
Or was it some inherent cry of nature to adorn, 
Some deep enthralled beauty-sense that languished 

to be bom? 
Or did the heavenly Artist from His treasured beauty 

store 
Select the daintiest garment that a creature ever 

wore 
To clothe the humblest one, to show again how He 

delights 
To elevate what is despised to beauty's highest 

heights, 
To prove again that of His rich salvation He does 

vest 
The amplest measure in the meekest and the low- 
liest? 

43 



MUSIC 

Music is the blended speech 

Of heaven 's border-line, 
Where our grosser talk of earth 

With angel-words combine. 
In proud, overwhelming tones it swells, 
Or soft on melting accents dwells, 
Until the raptured spirit wells 

In harmony divine. 

Away from these material ties 

It leads with unseen hands, 
With unseen arms it guides to where 

Our vision's range expands, 
Till our small heart the great world holds. 
Its joys and beauties all unfolds; 
This common work-day world it moulds 

Into ecstatic lands. 
44 



Its undulations float along 
Like winds o'er waving grain, 

And crowd a train of wandering thoughts 
Upon our pensive brain; 

A train that no beginning hath, 

A feeling that ne'er passed the breath. 

And all of life and all of death 
Is mingled in the strain. 




45 



THE IRON- WEED. 

You may croon me a rune of the lotus-bloom 

On the dank river-bank of the ancient Nile ; 
You may praise in fond lays their cloying perfume 

That, they say, can allay and forever beguile 
The pent up tears and the wounds of the years — 

But why sing of Egypt 's reed-bound shore 
When I know flowers with stranger powers 

Right near my Hoosier cottage door? 



Though they hold not the gold or the glimmering 
sheen, 

The perfume or rich bloom that some flowers show, 
Yet I feel them steal on my soul, unseen, 

In fallows where mallows and mullein-weeds grow. 
Like a fairy band they hold in their hand 

Some hidden, unbidden delight of the mead 
And with magic art they draw from my heart 

A deathless love for the iron-weed. 

46 



No splendour could render such delicate charm, 

No attar could scatter a daintier spell 
O'er the child-haunts and romance down on the old 
farm 

Where heart-sweet with bare feet I wandered at 
will. 
Now often I yield to the call of the field 

And seek by the creek where the kine used to feed 
Some untarnished scroll of my wistful soul 

In the lure and the love of the iron-weed. 



Sing muse, if you choose, of the flowers of Greece 

That bloomed sweet on Hymettus' fragrant hill, 
Amaryllas and lilies and rosemaries 

"With mazes of daisies and daffodil; 
Let the hyacinth breathe and the amaranth wreathe 

Me a seeming old dream of that classic mead — 
But why dreams of yore when I love much more 

The obscure soft lure of the iron-weed. 



47 



NIGHT-FALL 

The twilight gathers, and the sway 
And sovereignty of the orb of light 

Is broken, and imperious Day 

Must yield his scepter to the Night. 

Night comes not like the opening door 
Of morning, with its stir and din ; 

But like a mother, bending o'er 
The crib her child is cradled in. 

The Day's impetuous course is run; 

Night has her somber flag unfurled 
And golden wings from the hovering sun 

Like angels bless the sinking world. 

The languid earth now seeks her couch 
And hidden hands restrain the light, 

"While giant shadows creep and crouch 
Out from the borders of the night. 
48 



The queen of light leaves with dispatch, 
Dark forms arise from woods and leas, 

Pursuing her; they fain would snatch 
Her streaming garments as she flees. 

The queen of night, as if on down. 

Glides o'er the world in brown disguise; 

"With flutter of her trailing gown, 
"With star-light in her dusky eyes. 

Though not so fair as day, and yet 
The child cries in her soft embrace, 

And finds from worry and from fret 
A kind and gentle nestling-place. 

Soft-breathing breezes, rendered sweet 
By some coy flower's dainty scent, 

"Waft balmy fragrance and entreat 
To sleep and sleep's abandonment. 

49 



So Day and Night reign o'er their realms; 

They have their toils, they teach their 
truths ; 
The Day with splendour overwhelms, 

The Night the tired bosom soothes. 

So Life's and Death's alternate reign 
Bring cause to hope, and cause to weep, 

Love's music, and the sad refrain 
Of waning life, and rest, and sleep. 

The envoy. 

If you love day, then be consoled. 

Night has but its allotted time ; 
If you wish night, the day grows old 

And night is here, serene, sublime. 

If you love life, take comfort here. 
Somewhere a greater life will dawn; 

And if you're weary, death is near 
To rest you and then lead you on. 

50 



"SHE GAVE MORE THAN THEY ALL" 

You, who give lavishly, 

Think, how you take ; 
Your neighbor has one, where 

You thousands make. 
Though you have millions, 

By the true measuring rod 
His, counts as much as your 

In the clear sight of God. 

Think, can you take his mite 

As a just toll? 
His, is a trifle 

Compared with your roll. 
Nay, by God's measuring line 

His, is more valued 
Yours, is but a luxury's price 

His, buys the children bread. 
51 



Heaven's favor bless those who 

Hungry mouths feed; 
But why donate millions 

"Where there's no need? 
"Where did you get it all? 

At the Lord's judgment throne 
You are indicted, 

You took his very own. 

Think, can philanthropy 

Ever atone 
For this, though your drag-net 

Caught but his one ? 
Nayj you have filched from him 

Faith in an honest race. 
Trust in his own self-help and 

Courage this world to face. 



52 



THE MIND'S INVITATION TO POETICAL 
THOUGHT 

Gentle muse, I woo thy favor, 

Grant me thy propitious smUe ; 
And ye, early child-hood shadows, 

Linger once agaiu a while. 
Dreamland, ope thy mystic portals 

And disclose thy shadowy plain; 
Fleeting forms of former fancies 

Flit athwart it once again. 

Draw the curtains and unveil the 

Visions limned by life 's own hand ; 
Usher in the throng which mingled 

On a half -forgotten strand ; 
All those images which early 

Wove their strange fantastic spell, 
Sadder shades, whose earnest meaning 

Later life has taught so well. 
53 



Generous muse, rehearse the pageant 

Of man's life as it appears 
Through the sweep of memory's mystic 

Molten glamour of the years ; 
Paint in lucid, softened pictures 

Shade and sunshine of the past, 
When the storms on life 's arena 

Chased each other fierce and fast. 



When the gleeful bells of morning 
Bang in rhythm with the swell 

Of the myriad-mouthed music 
On life 's busy citadel ; 

When those stirring peals and throbbing 

Later blended with the chime. 

With the mellowed, muffled cadence 

That will greet life 's after-time. 

54 



Open wide the long-passed flood-gates, 

Bid forgotten prayers surge 
From them and with their impulsive 

Pleas again the soul submerge. 
Show the answers to those prayers, 

Offered vaguely and unskilled, 
How they years and years unawares 

In their own way were fulfilled. 



Suppress not the scenes of anguish 

That the past can conjure up; 
Rather show the chastening purpose ; 

Pass once more life's bitter cup; 
From the buried days of sorrow 

Bid the fount of pent-up tears 
Break its seal, and deep contrition 

"Weep again the woe of years. 
55 



Bring to mind again the pleasure, 

Pure and exquisite content 
With which in an ample measure 

Time's dear troubles are besprent. 
For the draught of tribulation's 

After-taste with sweetness blends; 
Pain and sorrow have their season, 

Cheer and love are constant friends. 



Gentle muse, vouchsafe not only 

Half -blurred visions of the past 
But unlock the living present 

With its varied views and vast. 
But life is a restless ocean 

With such mystic burdened waves 
The presumptuous bard is humbled 

At the seer-gift that he craves. 
56 



For around him crowd the living 

With the moist sweat on their brows 
Struggling with their love-plans, life-plans — 

Which the bard would fain espouse; 
And the pencil dipped in heart-love 

Fain in pictures would translate 
All their deep-stored future destiny, 

All their bliss-fraught, dread-fraught fate. 



And he yearns to sketch the promptings 

And impulses of the soul 
That have power to stir to action 

And have virtue to control 
All the drift of man's ambitions. 

These the poet fain would glean 

Till he sees the heart 's exhaustless 

Passions pictured on a screen : 
57 



Sees where swift cohorts of progress 
Push their ranks along the track 

Of advancement, and the evil 
Hamper them and hold them back ; 

And where mercy builds a highway- 
Through the wilderness of time 

And the tyrant marches o'er it 
To advance his cause of crime : 



How sometimes there looms the promised 

Diadem to mortal eyes 
And a multitude of loyal 

Ones rush up to pluck the prize ; 
How these stretched-out hands fall listless 

And their crown is snatched away 
And man retrogrades to war and 

Old time hatred and dismay. 
58 



Like a panorama, show the 

Paintings in life's hazy halls, 
All the glad ones and the sad ones 

On the strangely panelled walls, 
Where the God-sprung human figures 

Sturdily, with smile or frown, 
Fight their life-fight, sing their life-song, 

Laugh and weep and then go down. 



But the mind gets tired pondering 

On man's life as it appears. 
And the mind gets weary, solving 

At the problem of the years. • 
Lead me back then to the sunshine 

And its magic alchemy; 
To the soothing haunts of child-hood — 

Nature, and its poetry. 
59 



Nature's muse, help thy diviner 

Sister swing the magic wand 
That untangles life's rare message 

And interprets the Beyond. 
Let us from the common bird-song 

And the water's lisp imbibe 
Sacred lore from which our souls may 

Higher prophecies transcribe. 



Like a child that at the conch-shell's 

Rosy lips, with wondering eyes, 
Listens, thinking it can hear the 

Ocean's untold mysteries, 
Later finds that those are echoes 

Of its own life and the key 
To a more momentous secret 

Than that of the wind and sea. 
60 



All depictings of the Present 

Or the Past, howe'er succinct, 
Are but fragmentary, broken. 

If not with the Future linked. 
Gentle muse, exalt my inner 

Senses then, that I may reach 
Out upon the trackless Future 

And discern what it would teach. 



Oft are heard above life's tumult 

Strange acclaims from yonder shore. 
And across the pathless distance 

Come and come forevermore 
Strains of some undying world-song ; 

And above it, soft and clear 
Leads a voice whose heavenly cadence 

Breathes of some sublimer sphere. 
61 



I'll not vie to walk with Dante 

O'er the light-kissed hills of morn, 
Or to watch in lurid twilight 

Shades o'er Styx's billows borne, 
Nor to reach the heights of Milton 

Sealing heaven with his art, 
Nor of Avon's bard, revealing 

Wonders of the human heart. 



I can't hope to sing, like Homer, 

A lost age's life-refrain, 
Nor to tune my lay, with Virgil's 

To that lofty poet's strain. 
Nor with Goethe quaff the muses' 
Richest vintage of the years. 
Nor with Hugo chant the sad, sad 
Songs of everlasting tears. 
62 



Though I fain would add, like others, 

Luster to our country 's fame. 
Or exalt, like our own Riley, 

Indiana's classic name; 
Yet I glean these scattered fragments 

All unknown and wait serene. 
My reward will be sufficient 

In the ephah which I glean. 



If to life's sublime cathedral 

Favored ones their votive bear, 
Grant that kneeling in the door-way 

"With some humble worshiper 
Of the sacred, solemn service 

Mingled murmurs I may hear, 
Of the grand orchestral music 

Passing strains my reach my ear . 
63 



And my mission is accomplished 

And my soul shall be content 
If to starving ones I show some 

Hidden source of nourishment. 
For a caravan rich-fraughted 

And heaped high with kingly stores, 
Chartered by some kingly sender 

Passes ever at our doors. 



64 



STAR-VOICES 

Look out upon the tenements of God, 

The starry heavens in their brilliant glare. 

Conceive how vast, how deep, how long, how broad 
The ground-plan was of Him who builded there. 

Long ere the first sweet anxious human face 
Peered out aloft from this our mother earth, 

The stars were there in their allotted place 

"Uttering speech and showing knowledge" since 
their birth. 

There is bright Orion 's beacon-flash on high, 

Erect and grand, invincible and true. 
Like some great watchman of the southern sky 

Treading his rounds in the ethereal blue. 

And there Arcturus, with his steady gaze 
Looks down in human eyes as if to say : 

"I can but speak my love to you in rays 
For I'm a hundred trillion miles away." 

65 



Through far, abysmal reaches of wide space 
By sweet star-voices are we ever wooed 

And lifting litanies of love and grace 
Break the deep stillness of Infinitude. 

Do they not speak to us ? Do we then lift 
In vain our eager searching eyes above ? 
Is not their blessed limpid light a gift ? 
Does not a giver plainly say : * * I love ' ' ? 

Their firmanent of joy and beauty siags. 

The beauty of the jewel-vaulted sky 
Falls on us like a benison and clings 

Around us like sweet incense from on high. 

Their voices chant to us of trust sublime, 
That He who through illimitable space 

And through the dim immensity of time 

Can lead these spheres, will lead us with His grace. 
66 



They sing of faith; the faith that in the grand 
Immeasurable fabric-house there should 

Be He who made it glorious, He who planned 
It all and saw that it was very good. 

The meek shall walk these bending courts of light, 

And the refulgent canopy shall be 
A hallowed sanctuary to invite 

To quiet reverence and humility. 

For through wide reaches of abysmal space 
By sweet star- voices are we ever wooed, 

And lifting litanies of love and grace 
Break the deep silence of Infinitude. 



67 



AFTER DEATH 

Lord, if I should die today, 

Should I lose all the things I wrought on this life's 

toilsome way? 
Should I lose all this little good I sought so hard to 

gain, 
All that I strove for here on earth with worry and 

with pain, 
"Would all my sweet ambitions and the dreamings of 

my life 
With all the pleasant things I loved and clung to 

through the strife. 
With all their sweet environments, forever fall away, 
O Lord, if I should die today? 

O Lord, if I should die today. 

Would all my aims and plans be only realized 

half-way. 
And would life's book of poems only fragment lines 

contain ? 
Would life's great song be broken in the middle of 

the strain? 
The pages of God's nature-book to which I love to 

yield 
Would be forever closed to me, its leaves forever 

sealed ? 
My heritage of mind and thought would be cut ofE 

straightway, 
O Lord, if I should die today? 

68 



O Lord, if I should die today, 

Would all this sweet and bouyant summer light of 

life's noonday 
Be quenched and damped and darkened into sad and 

silent night? 
And every gleam I gathered from the heavenly 

realms of light, 
And all my soul's wild reaching out and my heart's 

hungry cry 
Be still and stifled and unanswered with the days 

gone by? 
Could I not even, like one sleeping, dream of time 

that passed away 
O Lord, if I should die today? 

O Lord, if I should die today, 

The spoiler's hand would level down this earthly 

house of clay 
And pillage all its furnishings ; and yet my soul 

discerns, 
It is but exiled to a better, purer home for which it 

yearns, 
"Where things worth while from earth shall be as 

precious as of yore 
And blend with the transporting joys that heaven 

has in store; 
"Where light and right and truth and growth and 

mercy have full sway, 
O Lord, if I should die today. 

69 



Lord, if I should die today, 

Whatever I would lose with earth, keep me Thy 

love, I pray; 
Thy love so real, that sought me and with over- 
whelming grace 
Through all my prone, half-faithful life held me in 

sweet embrace; 
Then would I fear death's ruthless grasp and 

dreaded sting no more, 
Then would I launch out gladly from this life's 

tumultuous shore. 
Led by Thy life-inspiring love, forever and for aye, 
Lord if I should die today. 




70 



EPIPHANY 

Luke 1, 78. 

Out from the vistas of eternity 
Each new day comes, a messenger to me ; 
From palaces on the eternal shore, 
Each morning is an envoy at my door. 

His robes are rich and radiant, so rare 
No Eastern splendour can with them compare; 
No poet's dream or vision could review 
The beauty of his princely retinue. 

Perhaps beyond the distant Pleiades 
Where myriad spheres swing on in ellipses 
This great King dwelleth, whose ambassador 
Fraught with rich gifts is entering at my door. 

First, from the King 's ethereal realms so bright 
He brings a flood of winsomCj gladsome light; 
The light that makes me laugh. He brings the 

wealth 
Of flowers, singing birds and glowing health. 

71 



Aye, he brings more ; the love of human kind, 
Of kin and friends, of heart-strings intertwined, 
Encircling arms, endearing names, above 
All else the lisp of childhood's guileless love. 

And from his master's treasure-house he brings 
Gifts, the most precious of all precious things; 
An answered prayer; a contrite humble soul; 
A blessed christian life, through faith made whole. 

And from the store-house of his King he brought 
The talisman of thaumaturgic thought; 
Deep joys of delving deep, in searching out 
And wresting truth from ignorance and doubt. 

"Teach me bright herald of the light," cried I, 
How I can love your gracious King and by 
What service please Him;" He replied, "By one, 
Accept another gift, the greatest one." 
72 



And from among the splendour of his train 
Came one in servant's garb and would remain 
With me and be my helper and my friend. 
I gazed — this greatest gift to comprehend. 

Then as a child, long lost, with yearning cry 

To mother clings ; so did I to Him fly ; 

So did my heart to Him a love-cry bring. 

My envoy said, ''Behold your Lord, the King." 

Out from the vistas of eternity 
The morning's glory-light shines full and free; 
Not only earthly day-spring does it grant, 
The King comes from among the radiant. 

And as the starlight's sheen will never pale, 
So His inviting grace will never fail. 
Behold, His open, outstretched, giving hand 
Is filled with gifts for us from heaven's land. 
73 



AIMS AND NEEDS 

Lord, I have aims; my higher orisons 
Seek for the star-lit path that upward runs; 
But when I scan my need of humbler things 
It puts an anchor to my soaring wings. 

I dream of conquests, and my spirit vies 
To scale in triumph the sublimer skies; 
But my heart-needs admonish and I know 
The lowly path is all that I can go. 

Lord, my aspiring life has often sought 
The virtues which Thy noble life has taught; 
And here again I learn, if I want these 
That I must live my life upon my knees. 

I look with longing to the sunlit hills, 
And a sweeet impulse through my bosom thrills 
To leave the valley; yet I know, I know, 
'Tis safer with Thy hidden love below. 
74 



Yes, I have many, many humble needs; 
And though my vaulting spirit sometimes pleads 
That I might live in higher realms, I know 
The lowly path is all that I can go. 



75 



WISTFULNESS 

Lord, lead my storm-tossed bark to Thee; 
I am weary and tempest-driven. 

Bid Thy gale hie my sail to the jasper sea 
That lies laughing in the offing of heaven. 

Lord, I sue for a view of the waving palms 
Where the islands of Thy highlands arise; 

1 would fain hear a strain of the heaven-sweet 

psalms 
From that far, wooing paradise. 

0, I ween I can glean from that glory-world 

A vision of elysian field; 
I yearn to discern the sweet realms unfurled 

And the heavenly mansions revealed. 
I long for the throng on the sacred strand 

And to kneel with Thy seal on my brow, 
To embrace as a grace from Thy Father-hand 

Things higher, I desire even now. 
76 



I'm a-weary of this dreary and turbulent sea; 

For the joyful moment I pine 
When salvation's habitations will appear to me 

Breaking over the far sea-line ; 
When my eyes in surprise shall a glory behold 

Not allowed to the proud and the wise, 
For in meekness I seek till my soul is consoled 

With arrha from paradise. 

I would here tarry near, and Thy summons abide, 

Where the bright city's white towers show; 
I would note their forms float in the glassy tide 

With their pinnacles all aglow. 
I could view through the blue of Thy sunlit strand 

Fronded isles lapped in smiles of the sea, 
And the motion of the ocean would, like mother's 
hand, 

Rock my troubles away from me. 
77 



And the wave's listless lave and the wind that 
swerved 

O'er my ship would chant a refrain 
Of a guerdon that came to my soul, undeserved, 

Of a love I never could gain. 
With a cry I would try the plan to unfold 

That wafted my craft on this sunny sea, 
But forever, I never could fathom or hold 

The cause of the love of eternity. 

Then my craft would I moor near the shore of 
that land 
The home of the blood-washed throng; 
From the beach do they reach out their beckoning 
hand, 
And it makes me so ardently long ; 
For I trow that they know and their bright faces 
glow, 
"When they think of life's cruel tide, 
How through much tribulation and sorrow 
and woe 
We seek to be satisfied. 

78 



But, Lord, I 'm content with what Thy love brings 

And I kneel for my weal or my woe ; 
In the fright of the night my hand still clings 

To a hand that will not let me go. 
With Thy aid, unafraid, I shall persevere, 

Till I see Thy likeness and form. 
For we hear, sweet and clear, Thy assuring cheer 

Through the gloom and the spume of the storm. 



79 



SIlj^ Bmm BmvtliittB 



THE SEVEN SEARCHERS 

In some old college town, the story goes, 

There dwelt an aged savant. He was kind 
And very wise, but never would disclose 

His learning, and disguised his deeper mind 
In feigned ignorance. Oft like a dunce 

With vacant air and blankness in his face 
He answered weighty questions by mere grunts 

Or by some vague, unmeaning paraphrase. 
And yet the freshmen whispered it about 

"With awe-struck looks, that this old man could 
solve 
Problems, of which the wisest were in doubt, 

Great questions, which the world could not evolve. 
And older students were afraid of him. 

For in their mental tiffs he often made 
Them know that if they plunged they had to swim 

In waters that he only seemed to wade. 
They had him with much mystery surrounded; 

They felt, but fathomed not, his giant mind ; 
This caused strange rumors and reports unfounded 

To circulate. Some said that he could find 
Trove treasures by some cabalistic art; 

81 



He was in league with Satan, one would say; 
Unlettered folk with apprehensive heart, 

"Would cross themselves whene'er he passed their 
way. 
The faculty and students of the college 

And learned people seemed to all agree 
That he possessed both deep and lofty knowledge; 

And some went farther ; said he could foresee 
By some prophetic gift of intuition. 

The future; that he could foretell events, 
Like some profound, adept mathematician 

Can figure out results. Some higher sense. 
They said, pervades his intellectual field. 

Suggesting that in his past life at some 
Sublimer shrine of knowledge he had kneeled. 

Which, though suppressed, would to the surface 
come. 

He knew the Truth, they claimed, concerning Man; 

Man 's purpose, and the course that is the best 
To follow, to fulfiill life 's wondrous plan. 

They claimed he knew what others only guessed. 
Yet he loved human-kind, would often come 

To gatherings and bowed but rarely spoke 

82 



"When honored. Rarely could the cry of some 

Great inner thought a word from him evoke. 
Like when an artist, who had stirred the world 

With his deft pencil and creative mind 
Is from his high career forever hurled 

When untoward misfortune made him blind, 
Will sit in darkness, brood in silence on 

The time when winged genius brought him fame, 
Until the embers of a fire long gone 

On memory 's hearth are kindled into flame ; 
So seemed our sage whene'er he sat so cold, 

The image of arrested thought; as if 
Egyptian stone-hewn Colossi of old 

Forgot their message that they were to give. 
So seemed our sage, when from some quiet story 

He suddenly aroused and from him gushed 
An inundating flood of mental glory 

That all his hearers into silence hushed. 
As though he caught himself, he then would lapse 

Into grim silence and would say no more, 
But looked chagrined; the hearers thought perhaps 

That he begrudged his intellectual store. 
And so the students one day had a meeting 

For consultation and to lay a plan 
To wring by stratagem or by entreating 

The guarded knowledge from the silent man. 

83 



By some excuse they brought him where they met 

And greeted him with some contumely, 
Demanded of him that he pay his debt. 

To them and to poor blind humanity. 
"Behold," they plead, "these ancient college walls 

Hold garnered wisdom of five thousand years 
And more ; you are aware how in these halls 

Infinite pains and toil and even tears 
And human lives are laid at wisdom's shrine. 

The world is pillaged; ruins old and hoary 
Are made to gape and leave light in again; 

Old images are made to tell their story ; 
The mummied dead who left this world midst pain 

And weeping voices, tremulous with love. 
Are made sit up, importuned to explain 

Mysterious things the living know not of. 
The earth is delved; the masonry of Grod 

Is now from bottom layer to its cope 
Exploited and laid bare; the divining rod 

No longer satisfies, but man will grope 
And search for missing line or lacking letter 

In Af ric 's burning sand, in frozen zone 
Twixt ice and heaven; he will break the fetters 

That bind strange forces, hidden and unknown, 

84 



And harness them as auxilliary power 

To ferret out and find the final goal, 
The Truth; and to accelerate the hour 

When man shall know the destiny of his soul, 
His object in this world, his course of duty. 

And if success attends man's quest at last 
And from the realms of light and truth and beauty 

He snatched a part : 0, how he holds it fast 
And tries to rivet it into his soul; 

With rare, surpassing art perpetuates 
The little jot gained from the immense whole. 
He writes it in a book; or he creates 
An image of it. To immortalize 

And save it from Time's swift relentless mould 
He builds a tomb or temple to the skies 

For it to dwell in ; thinking he can hold 
Some vestige or some emblem of its worth 

On painted canvas or in sculptured stone. 
That in the darkness it may point from earth 

To Truth, high, holy, shining on her throne. 
Resignedly, man sees his pleasant youth 

And life and hoarded wealth and power decay; 
Yet would he stem Time's ravages, when Truth 

85 



And Light and Beauty seem to pass away. 
Transcendent things like these are daily done 

To gain a little fragment of the Truth 
And hold it safely after it is won." 

The speaker paused; the contumacious youth 
Pressed closer to the hoary-headed sage; 

''We come to you," the spokesman then pursued, 
As to a fountain that we may assuage 

Our thirst for knowledge ; for we long have wooed 
For it, and followed by that tedious route 

Which I rehearsed e'en now in my prologue, 
Through ever-shifting shadow-fields of doubt. 

With all the modern methods now in vogue 
Have we applied ourselves at learning's door; 

With what result? As the great Newton said. 
We have but found some pebbles on the shore; 

In grasping after Truth, we have, instead, 
In semi-darkness caught but slipping strands. 

And holding these we follow, hope and pray; 
But some of us hold on with trembling hands 

And most of us are weary of the way. 

'Tis noised abroad that you do know the Truth ; 

As thy disciples at thy feet we wait, 
Do not refuse or else we might, forsooth, 

86 



Beleaguer you till you capitulate. 
Behold, what vistas open to the eye; 

You give us light by granting our wish, 
Add fame and honor to our alumni 

And stop a lot of learned gibberish. 
So your own reputation would increase 

Like spiral waves of water, circling, flee 
When falls some rock from towering precipice 

Which overhangs the placid inland sea. 
It seems to us to be a glorious thing 

To teach a truth, the world so long has sought 
And see it spread as if on rumor's wing 

And shake the very fundaments of thought. 
While you, who by repute possess the power, 

Would stand out like a hero, laurel-crowned; 
The cynosure, the lion of the hour. 

Whom ages would regard with love profound. 
Alas — by all your bearing we can trace 

That, hidden deeply in your heart, you know 
The things we wistfully desire, yet your face 

Does not with joy and exultation glow?" 
The sage arose — not like a seer inspired 

Whose message bursts the shackles of his soul, 
But like one undecided; one required 

87 



To play an averse and perplexing role — 
"The gentle water should be called from rock 

By gentle speech; with an impulsive blow 
Did Moses sin; while you, you would unlock 

The sealed fount by both and make it flow. 
Know then, with kindly deference to your plea, 

I do not want to speak, nor you to hear 
The things that you so fain would wring from me ; 

I am a man of cowardice and fear." 
' ' What need of fear ! ' ' the clamoring students cried ; 

''Where is the danger that you're speaking of? 
'Tis rather fame and honor multiplied 

Would come as meed to you, and human love." 
"Aye, human love, unconsciously you spoke 

A word that brings unquenchable regret 
Into my heart and tells me how I broke 

My plighted trust, and how my sacred debt 
I did so cravenly repudiate. 

0, human love, thou fullest recompense 
To sainted ones within the golden gate 

Of heaven, where they refuge take, and whence 
From heart-love which they had engendered here 

A holy tribute mounts up to the skies, 

88 



And there becomes to them a feast of cheer 

The most delectable of paradise. 
Though centuries may wend along and file 

With steady step past ruined monuments 
Of earthly splendour ; great empires may pile 

Themselves upon the wrecked magnificence 
Of those preceding them! they in their turn 

Will fall and mingle with the dust of ages ; 
But thou, human love, through all the stern 

Vicissitudes recorded in the pages 
Of tear-stained history; thou, from the time 

When first thou wert inspired by a deed 
Of sacrifice, or by a heart sublime 

That hearkened to the plaint and crying need 
Of man and took his part in face of danger; 

Or by a lowly one who, quite unknown, 
Did angel service to both friend and stranger; 

Or by a soul-hero, who heard the people groan 
And felt the weight that crushed himself and others, 

Did by eternal effort raise the load 
Until he rolled it off and freed his brothers 

And thus the chance of life and growth bestowed. 

Thy conquests, human love, are greater far 

Than all those gained by shrewdness or by force, 

89 



Than all the vaunted victories of war. 

The flowers nursed by thee along life's course, 
The well of water wooed from arid earth, 

The sweet inviting hostelries of peace, 
Thy faiths that stimulate to deeds of worth 

Are songs, inspired in heaven, that never cease. 
And worthy that great bards the strain prolong 

In epic meter or heroic verse. 
Yet, often did thy advocates this song 

With suffering martyr-pean intersperse. 
0, human love, thy lovers often fare 

But poorly here; and those that most have 
cherished 
"With gentle zeal thy tenets, often were 

Rejected by the world; and many perished; 
And many still will suffer pain and loss; 

They drink a Gethsemane cup of wine 
Because they will espouse thy sacred cause 

And will not bow at mammon's sordid shrine. 
But, when the winepress finally will cease 

Its weary, crushing, mangling, bleeding grind 
Thou, martyred human love, shalt then give peace 

To those that for thy triumph prayed and pined. 
The world, too, may then come with chastened heart 

90 



And bring its incense, rich and genuine; 
"With tardy homage, it may own thou art 
A child of heaven; bom of Love divine." 

He, lost in reverie, was quite unconscious 

That anxious hearers hung upon his words; 
They, pleased, regarded him as one who launches 

Out on the deep; or as the wide-winged birds 
Will preen their feathers and prepare for speed 

On the warm weaving winds. They cheered 
him on; 
With nods and smiles they urged him to proceed. 

As when before the creeping crimson dawn 
The timid hare will seek some sheltered nook 

Among the leaves and brushwood, where the least 
Suspicion points for hunter's eye to look 

And search for game; so now dismay increased 
Within the gentle bosom of our sage ; 

His situation stared him in the face. 
Or, like a deer, when all around does wage 

The baying-mouthed alarum of the chase. 
With swift and searching glances plans a flight 

By which it might escape; so did he ponder 
On some pretext to free him from his plight. 

91 



The students on the other hand grew fonder 
Of him and of his presence, and they bid 

Him to compose himself; addressed their guest 
With gentle and respectful words; they chid 

His apprehension as they 'round him pressed. 
The bested sage entrenched himself in stern 

And sullen silence. Nor could discourse fell 
Or fair dislodge him from his taciturn, 

Self-isolated, mental citadel. 
The game was blocked. As when in draughts of 
chess 

One side has gained some point of vantage-ground^ 
The other then with counter-plans will press 

His opponent where he is weakest found, 
So did these students now a council hold 

To plan what means or methods would be wise. 

He would not yield to force or love or gold; 

So next they thought upon a compromise 
And thus approached him: "You will not divulge 

The much desired knowledge and be free; 
We have decided kindly to indulge 

Your misgivings, whatever they may be. 
Respected One, whereas you do deny 

92 



That we your secret Epopee should know, 
We beg you, tell at least the reason why 

You do refuse; then we will let you go." 
The glorious glow of golden afternoon 

Touched in the classic Philomaethean hall 
Phantastic figures of romantic rune, 

And ponderous volumes, reverenced by all 
But never read, and ancient statuary, 

And the low-murmllring students in groups 
Discussing statecraft and news military, 

The latest war, the movement of the troops. 
And ever and anon their vision wandered 

To where their aged guest with bristling brow 
Sat in the afternoon's soft light and pondered 

Upon some method of escape, or how 
He could appease their set determination. 

When he arose he had an audience 
That urged its cause with some vociferation. 

And backed it with appealing arguments. 
''The reason, tell us but the reason why 

Upon such vital questions you demur 
To speak, although the heavens high 

And the low groaning world seem to concur 

That those deep mysteries sometime must be solved; 

93 



That he who shirks them sorely may transgress; 
That paramount to others, they involved 
The human race, and woe and happiness." 

" It is agreed ; I render half the game ; 

To your persistent clamor I will yield; 
Hear then, an old man's obloquy and shame." 

And thus the silent man his mind unsealed: 
"The reason is, that I do cleave and cling 

To life. Enjoyable to me and sweet 
It was from early childhood and did fling 

The choicest morsel lavish at my feet. 
Like old rich wine, without its ill effects, 

I drank, and loved its vivifying charm. 
Not that I lived as one who not respects 

This gift of life ; nor like the moths that swarm 
Around the light in such a reveling glee 

Scorching their wings, that all their little life 
In joy is wasted. Ever did I flee 

From dissipation, from unseemly strife, 
Yet I enjoyed sweet life e'en as a fish 

Enjoys its limpid element; to me 
My very moving steeled my joy afresh, 

My very living was a luxury; 

94 



As though my body centuries ago 

Did languish to be born, and now rejoices 
Because from nature's bosom, soft and low, 

It heard the call of life in music voices. 
And labor, such as others deemed a drudge, 

Rolled through my hands without a touch of fret, 
And self-denials, such as others judge 

To be exacting, I with pleasure met. 
And then came one into my charmed life 

That made my whole existence doubly sweet; 
I speak of her who freely brought, as wife. 

Her wealth of love and made my bliss complete. 
Her love came to me like a great surprise. 

Like something God for centuries had stored 
In jealous keeping; then conferred the prize 

On unexpecting me. If on great hoard 
Of costly gems and jewels from the East 

And piles of golden ingots, rarely wrought, 
And richest ornaments, your eyes could feast. 

The keeper then would push the glittering lot 
High-heaped to you and tell you it is yours. 

So did her wealth of worth surprise my soul. 
But, 0, no earthly treasure-house so pure. 

So rich and priceless jewels could unroll. 

95 



And all her beauty never would compare 

With gems or sordid gold; because no pearl 
Of purest water was one half as rare 

As her sweet living innocence ; no beryl 
Of the Indian sun that caught the light 

Blue gleamings of the sea when at its calm, 
Awakened happiness one half as bright; 

No chalcedony that dispenses balm 
And hope of life, green-glinting through the maze 

Of lurid light, brought half the lifting cheer; 
No diamond, hidden deep, developed rays 

From dreams of upper light one half as clear 
And constant and serene as those which shone 

In her sweet face, suggestive of the beams 
Of higher sphere-light which, perhaps, her own 

Pure soul assimilated in her dreams. 

Her small and tender hands dripped with the gift 
Of helpfulness. Her lithe and agile limbs 

"Were ever eager and her feet were swift 

To carry loving comfort. No shadow dims 

Her memory, except that of her grave. 

And loss to me and mine. When she was gone 

Life lost its charm for me and I did crave 

96 



To follow her into the gleams of dawn 
Of yonder life. But when the poignant grief 

Subsided, then the love of life returned. 
I had two sons which now became my chief 

Solicitude. Of that dear one I mourned, 
The very image was the younger one ; 

The older favored me. As when some vine 
Of choicest fruitage withers and is gone, 

The gardener, to perpetuate the line 
Of noble harvest, nurses with great care 

The tender scions springing from its root, 
In order that in season they may bear 

Like quality and kind of luscious fruit; 
So henceforth my affections were divided 

Between my youthful sons in equal share. 
Their tendencies from wrong to right I guided, 

Their growth and education was my care. 
And when I witnessed how they prospered and 

Dared with the world co-operate, compete; 
When seeing them encounter life, yet stand 

Its shock, paternal joy was nigh complete. 
As by great cost and engineering skill 

The great Americans essay to cleave 
The mountains and to join Pacific's still 

97 



And docile waters with Atlantic's wave; 
So that when once within Culebra's strait 

The sister oceans mingling meet and smile, 
The cruise from eastern to the golden gate 

"Will be diminished by ten thousand mile ; 
So can youth's long and dangerous voyage out 

By wisely engineering be made short, 
Avoiding shipwreck by a safer route 

And entering earlier at the golden porte. 
But now they both are gone; duty's behest 

The older called to distant field of action. 
The younger joined his mother with the blest. 

And life would be for me without attraction, 
But a grand-daughter left as precious pawn 

Of love, by my dead son, now comforts me. 
She is but twelve, and like the promising dawn 

Her blithe and buoyant beauty brings me glee. 
Her eyes seem to have filched, from heaven's night, 

Unconquered rays, with tinge of darker blue. 
To soften down the brilliant over-light. 

Her mass of hair holds all the dusky hue 
Of deep soft midnight. She wears like a queen 

Queen-jewels in her hair; their scintillations 
Seem like star-clusters of the midnight sheen. 

98 



And even while in this incarceration 
I languish, till I have my freedom gained, 

She wonders what unforeseen dreadful harm 
Has come to me and why I am detained; 

While every moment adds to her alarm. 

But now, you, in a measure, understand 

Why love of life has been to me a strong. 
Unbreakable and ever-binding band 

That bound me like a rigid iron thong. 
In early life, in some grave youthful vision 

I saw life's meaning deep, and deep heart-woe 
Seized on my soul, and I made my decision 

To seek for knowledge, so that I might know 
What in this muddled mazy life is dross, 

And where among the heaped-up rubbish glow 
Its priceless jewels; know how thick the gloss; 

How deep o'er life's eternal things this show 
And tinsel is spread on; what underneath; 

To know what fights are worthy of great valor, 
What valor may be worth a victor's wreath. 

What wreath will bless the brow. To be a scholar 
And delve into the depths of hidden things 

Was my ambition, and, for years, like you 

99 



I gathered of the best, the harvestings 

Of centuries, in knowledge old and new. 
I reveled through my college years, nor wasted 

My privileges; followed close in line 
By other zealous students; and we tasted 

And deeply quaffed the pure Pierian wine. 
And when our student years drew to an end 

Close-woven love and friendship, time had 
wrought, 
Like soldiers are thereafter friend and friend 

Who with each other shared the soldiers' lot. 
Among us there were seven comrades, tried, 

Drawn to each other by some common bent 
Or purpose ; perfectly we seemed allied ; 

Each one filled out his special complement 
To make a perfect and congenial whole. 

One eve we seven met at the "Bed-rock" 
As we were wont, where each one paid his toll 

With cheer and love and profitable talk. 
It was proposed that we rehearse the chief 

Things that we gathered in our school career; 
In comprehensive scope, to give, in brief, 

A mental inventory, as it were. 

100 



Some subject we to each did then assign, 

To demonstrate its worth. Not like the miser 
"Who loves to see his hoarded treasure shine; 

Nor quack who lauds, as his own advertiser. 
His worthless nostrums higher than the skies; 

But as a careful man who stock and store 
Of ware for his own future profit buys; 

Or who invested money in a score 
Of various materials to build 

Himself a house to please his future bride; 
Who had the new and splendid rooms well filled 

With cosy furnishings, and naught denied; 
And, deeming her as worthy of the best, 

Took proper care his person to adorn; 
And e'en his soul examined, to arrest 

Some evil tendencies, by error born; 
Who, at the wedding day, would then go over 

His plans, to be assured they were above 
The careful criticisms of a lover. 

And worthy of a woman's blessed love. 
So were our mind's attainments then to be 

Before our vision as a map unrolled 
The slightest good shall have its verity 

What is unworthy must not be extolled; 

101 



These were our only rules. The first began; 
His name was — but we only called him, "Script" 

A nick-name had all seven, to a man, 

Some were uncouth^ yet they were hewed and 
chipped 
Off love's vocabulary; were in mint 

Of fond affection coined. Script's great desire 
He said, jokingly, was to get in print. 

Yet, long ago, he sealed his faith with fire ; 
(The sequel shows.) The theme to him assigned 

Was human language. He inquired, if one 
Learned human life if stingily confined 

To his own tongue? Could he have ever won 
The wealth of ancient classic life and lore? 

Could he have learned first lessons with the last? 
Could he have caught from oriental shore 

The story of the ages that have passed? 
And then he showed that foot-marks, half-effaced 

Between the strata of our English-German 
Can be to Sanscrit and old India traced 

And clearly to our reason does determine 
That our sweet singers, of the present age. 

Are noble offspring from the shores of Ind. 

102 



That Persia's old poetic heritage 

Is our very own. Though by the wind 

Of emigration, through long spans of time 
We wafted past the Euxine-Caspian seas, 

Our speech holds echoes from the sunlit clime 
Of ancient man beyond the Euphrates. 

So Script in better words. From elements 

Of speech which first are learned in thumbed 
leaves 
To Logic, Rhetoric and Eloquence, 

He skirted where the subject interweaves 
And dovetails with Fine Art and History. 

He dwelt upon the writings that endure 
The lapse of time ; for life 's great mystery 

Is mirrored in each nation's literature. 
And then he closed his subject's exposition 

In some such words: "The scope and range of 
speech 
Its use in sweet and delicate expression. 

Its power, show that human efforts reach 
Out into the unspeakable ; would fain 

The all-surrounding messages translate 
And put in human words that which in vain 

103 



A thousand mouths try to communicate. 
Man in his deepest soul, yearns to express 

Deep-hidden thoughts of his deep-hidden mind 
Like gathered subterranean waters press 

With force against their prison walls to find 
An upward issue through the rock and ground. 

And when the welling waves a crevice wear, 
Rejoicing, high towards the sky they bound 

And murmuring mingle with the sun-kissed air. 
So man does wistfully desire to speak 

His heart's deep burden; like a child that caught 
Some earliest words, repeating them, does seek 

To utterance give to its sweet-forming thought. 

If man would learn this higher language, and 

"Would use the speech-gifts with which Heaven 
crowned him 
Then he might have the power to understand 

The ever-speaking messages around him, 
That urge persistently for him to hear; 

The purling brook; the flower's dainty grace; 
The mighty ocean, which in shrieks of fear. 

Or whisperings of peace, speaks unto space 
High-circling, with eternal beacons lit ; 

104 



The stars themselves; and the wide welkin dome. 
And then again, the life-forms infinite 

"Which multitudinously creep or roam 
Or fly or swim or have no other moving 

Save their own growth ; the irksome life of man, 
Its struggling variedness, its hating, loving, 

Its ending and the briefness of its span, 
All speak a language. The whole universe. 

Each separate part of the eternal space 
Wherein it thrones is yearning to converse 

In its own language with the human race. 
No orator or elocutionist, 

Though trained and drilled as master of the art 
To portray thought and feeling and enlist 

All the receptive tendrils of the heart, 
Can speak so eloquently to the soul. 

O, for one gifted, that could in one broad. 
Replete and sweeping sentence couch the whole 

Of these appealing mysteries of God." 

Script ceased, but we remained and listened long, 
As though he still went on discoursing of 

That hidden language and diviner tongue ; 
And in our hearts was born a secret love 

105 



And craving to interpret and respond; 

Like some confiding tyro, fondly learning 
"Well-relished truths still reaches out beyond 

For more ; so we remained in silence yearning. 

The second now arose ; we called him Wax. 

In more than one way had he earned his name; 
In fierce contentions, strenuous attacks 

Of our debating club or football game. 
And in another sense he was a credit 

To the old meaning that his name expressed, 
For he believed in growth and often said, it 

Was of all human attributes the best. 
His subject was the history of man, 

And at some length he covered all the field 
From primitive conditions when began 

His first development ; how he did yield 
From age to age and in a gradual way 

To call of higher life, of broader mind 
And kinder heart, of more exalted sway 

Of power and help, until the various kind 
Of human laws and human institutions 

And governments were born and grew and flour- 
ished 

106 



And now peace-congresses, peace-resolutions 

And ideas of disarmament are nourished 
With other progress. Then along the line 

Of deeper drift and meaning, "Wax proceeded, 
To strike the under-current and design 

Of human actions ; he but little heeded 
The outward acts which are oft celebrated 

By the world 's shallow dazzle and eclat ; 
The feats of Alexander; over-rated 

Sad spectacle of war and conquest that 
Stand out so prominent in history's pages, 

From ancient Trojan war of ten years' length 
To some more modern battle-fields, where wages 

The tilt between false cunning and sheer strength. 
From these he turned to history's better phases; 

Running through all, he traced a golden thread 
That winds with golden meaning through the mazes 

Of human story. Thus he gently led 
Us up to this great vision of his mind: — 

^'Methought I stood beside the thoroughfare 
Of time. My earthly eyes with sorrow blind 

Were cleared and opened, and the mobile air 
Was so transparent I could see this road 

Lay broad before me in long stretches, springing 

107 



From out the formless, mystical abode 

Of birth of things; the weaving, shuttling, swing- 
ing 
Vast chaos where the nature and the form 

Of great events take their initial mold. 
Where darkly brew the sunshine and the storm 

To fill some checkered life not yet unrolled. 
From thence my vision saw this highway wend 

In long broad reaches up to where I stood, 
And sweeping by extending in its trend 

Into the future. There in cowled hood 
I saw some figure draped in mourning stand, 

Who seemed the keeper at a creped gate, 
Collecting toll. I peered into the land 

Beyond death's portals, where I saw the great 
And ponderous pile of earthly luggage fall 

From weary shoulders, undesired, tossed 
Aside, and heard deploring voices call 

For something real — but here my senses paused. 
I fell upon my knees and wished to scan 

The road still farther, where silently leads 
Through regions of the dead God's caravan 

That bears the fruitage of man's earthly deeds. 
I prayed to see and understand the sequel 

108 



Resulting from events on earth, conveyed 
To the beyond. I craved to see the equal 

And even poise of actions truly weighed. 
Anon, methought, that issuing from the deep 

And darksome dawn I saw events emerge 
Out on this highway, run their course and sweep, 

Along, like to a river's foaming surge. 
Methought that each transpiring act passed near 

The place that I had chosen, so that I 
Could scan it ere I saw it disappear. 

Events came thick and fast while I would try 
To trace with heightened and exalted vision 

What purpose prompted them e'en from their 
source 
To spring into existence ; what their mission ; 

What wrought the evolution of their course ; 
What their result and final consequences 

When summed up by unswerving computation. 
Then there appeared a wonder to my senses : 

Gigantic hands reached from some unseen station, 
Picked up each action on time's thoroughfare 

And weighed it with minutest nicety. 
And branded it so it would ever bear 

The stamp-mark of eternal verity. 

109 



And the sojourner on time's thoroughfare, 

That in life's varied action had a part, 
Was measured with exact and rigid care 

His will, his deeds, his love, his thought and heart. 
Some deeds were thrown aside as of no worth 

And humbler seeming actions were preferred. 
Those counted as important on this earth 

Were deemed as idle rubbish. He who stirred 
The whole of Europe, great Napoleon 

Was pushed aside with all his great career 
And some poor fishermen were picked upon 

To represent the thing of value here. 
The vaunted things of earth, the boughten praise 

Weighed in the balance by eternal hands. 
Seemed light as bubbles; here the quiet ways 

Of worth showed heft and answered the demands. 
The princely gifts, magnificent and rich, 

Went down in all their advertised array 
Before the blood-imprinted pittance which 

The widow offered in a shame-faced way 
Because it was so little. And amazed, 

I saw great movements, planned without a doubt 
To take the world by storm with banners raised, 

By some meek child-like service clear put out. 

110 



Upon the stamp-mark, which the sealer laid 

On all his work, indelibly, a word 
"Was deeply graven. Vainly I essayed 

To read its import. Not that it was blurred, 
But my apocalyptic sight had even 

Still left my eyes too full of earthly rheum 
To read the signet of eternal heaven. 

And yet I saw it shining through the gloom. 
I thought it "Justice", but it seemed to me 

In that, the stronger always holds the scale 
And metes it to weaker, but a free 

Co-equal measure seemed to here prevail. 
I think that it was "Justness". One who loved 

His fellow-man could read its hidden line 
With more distinctness. One who prayed, and loved 

His God could see its fadeless letters shine 
"With glowing luster: To him who observed 

Them both, the word became a living light 
And priceless jewel. So history swerved 

Along time's thoroughfare in rapid flight. 
And there I saw God's arbiter forever 

Sift human actions as to loss and gain; 
And with exactness does he cull and sever 

The sacred history from the profane." 

Ill 



Long after Wax had ceased, musing, we wondered 

Upon the mental picture that he drew 
Of the inscrutable; we sat and pondered 

And like the parched plants and flowers sue 
For moisture when from drouth they limply lie, 

So with a wistful longing we were seized, 
With famishment earth could not satisfy. 

By earthly knowledge could not be appeased. 

At the "Bed-rock" we met from eve to eve, 

That was the title of our rendezvous, 
Each in his turn would beg indulgent leave 

To offer to our memories anew 
The well-conned lessons. Now the turn was mine, 

The subject mathematics. And to thresh 
The knotty points we had along the line 

Over again; and to recall afresh 
How we with eager, thwarted, vain endeavor 

Essayed to square the circle, or trisect 
The angle, or invent some wheel or lever 

With parts so finely swung as to perfect 
The ignis fatuus of perpetual motion; 

Such was my task. But figures serve as props, 
As hidden cable strands across the ocean 

112 



Of the unmeasurable, where measuring stops. 
Some simple mathematical equations 

Uphold the fabric of the universe 
In the safe confines of our computations 

And serve as pole-stars in our drifting course. 
But often when we seemed about to score 

Success we found more trouble, for although 
We learned that two times two are four, yet four 

"Was just as much a mystery as two. 
And when Copernicus and prior sages 

Arranged the household of the heavenly spheres 
So that all bodies seemed as equipages 

To the great Earth, the heaven-viewing seers 
Had their hands full of trouble, for they jibed 

Not with their reckoning but oft would sally 
Out of the path they had for them prescribed. 

But Tyeho Brahe came to keep the tally 
Of their aberrent incoherency. 

And Galileo pointed to the sky 
His lensed tube; shook earth's stability; 

And time-tried theories seemed to go awry. 
Astronomers were still left in the lurch 

And the great law of movement was unsolved 
And patient students in their patient search 

113 



Were still at sea about how they revolved 
Around some center. Then a peasant lad 

Reared in a humble Swabian town, where he 
In German schools was drilled, and also had 

Learned life's most bitter inhumanity — 
— My soul is drenched with taste of salty tears 

When I recall a boy's heart-surging pain 
That comes in tender love-of-mother years. 

When mother suffers. The vindictive bane 
Of superstition, which like the old story 

Of dragon, that from time to time demanded 
The maiden of most beauty as a gory 

Meal for its ravenous maw, with full force landed 
And struck its teeth like to a fanged snake 

Into a boy's love; for John Kepler's mother 
Was publicly condemned, for witchcraft, to the 
stake. 

She was a woman somewhat unlike other; 
Was brighter, quicker to discern the true ; 

And with such strange intuitiveness crowned 
That she could reason in a straight line through 

Where others had to go far, far around. 
She gave the world a son; I'll say no more. 

But the Unsearchable did not despise 

114 



To have him cruise along his pathless shore 

And to unclasp the secrets of the skies. 
By aid of Tyeho Brahe's measurements 

And by his own invincible resource 
John Kepler traced the sought circumference 

And orbit of the planetary course. 
In double-centered circles they are chained 

To swing forever their ethereal route : 
The question why they thus revolved, remained 

For future reckoners to figure out. 
And one there came — his genius did eclipse 

Them all — If Kepler taught the world to know 
How this, our earth, revolves in an ellipse, 

As every planet does ; why they do so 
And are deterred from doing otherwise 

And are compelled to circle in this course 
In harmony with law which underlies 

The basic structure of the universe : 
"Was studied out by Newton. Time's machine 

Was old. Long years the human race did grope 
'Midst mystic things. The pointing hands were seen 

Upon the dial of Time's horoscope, 
Slow-moving and unerring, but the gear 

Connecting wheel with shaft and shaft with wheel 

115 



Into a clock-work, moving without veer 

Or variance, first Kepler could reveal. 
Then self-ignoring Newton came and showed 

The tensioned power, compelling master-spring 
Or gravitating clock-weights that bestowed 

The measured moving symmetry of swing. 
And many worthy helpers studied out 

The purpose of each ratchet and each cog; 
Of adverse forces which can bring about 

A regulating pendulum to clog 
And check danger, centr>p,€5ally holding. 

Like self-installed eternal safety-measure. 
With unseen mother-yearning forces folding. 

In sweeping all-embrace its trusted treasure. 
We need some greater genius; one who probes 

Behind the mechanism, to the key 
That winds this clock until it thrills and throbs 

With force-imprisoned action to be free ; 
And to the Hand that, when an age is through 

And the eternal evening shadows fall, 
Will turn the key and start the force anew 

Through all its channels ; even to the hall 
Upon the walls of which the key is hung; 

And to the holy precincts of the shops 

116 



Of the great Master-workman, and among 
Infinities where human reason stops. 

The fourth began ; his hackneyed name was Mute : 

Though odd, we spoke this name with deference. 
In school he gradually gained repute 

Of answering calls ere they had utterance; 
Of doing deeds, not giving them a name 

Till the whole task was finished and devised; 
He even forgot to speak or lay a claim 

To work well worthy to be eulogized. 
And yet in later life he gained renown 

And fame. While he yet lived I asked him once 
If he had never seen the laurel crown 

That hung above his brow; in meek response 
He told me how he formerly had yearned, 

As others, for distinction and applause 
But the same tide that brought it, too returned 

To him such overwhelming proof and cause 
That he should deem himself unworthy, quite. 

Of claims to honor. He who gets a glimpse 
Of oceans of unfathomable light 

Makes truce with self-ness, he no longer primps 
Himself with flattery that his own torch 

117 



Emits such brilliance to cause him pride. 
So answered he. — But to return in search 

Of my disjointed story's trend — a wide 
And comprehensive subject was assigned 

To Mute: the sciences. And he succeeded 
To touch upon and freshly bring to mind 

The covered ground, and he proceeded 
To thread the hidden paths; geology, 

The birth and growth of worlds and their forma- 
tion; 
Biology, life's growth; Zoology 

And Botany, life's fruit and their relation 
To one another; the inanimate 

And hidden forces shown in chemistry 
And physics, teeming, seeming like some great 

And curbed strength abiding destiny. 
He then came to the mooring-place from whence 

Our ether-planes set out into the blue 
Unbounded sea of heaven's wide expanse. 

Adrift, he cruised with us far out into 
The ample harbors and high-throning ports 

That clustering lie along the milky way 
Until we saw the turrets of the forts 

Of God loom in the distance, where for aye 

118 



His skimming watch-ships fly. Our minds were 
merged 

Into the fascinating thralldom of 
Mute's words, so that imploringly we urged 

Him to continue. He with kindly love 
Obeyed our wishes thus with deeper meaning: 

"We stand upon the mystic border-land 
Of the unknown, with zeal are ever gleaning 

Some conquered trophy, or some contraband 
Filched from the stubborn, adamantine grasp 

Of that dark envious realm. To penetrate 
Its infinite domain or to unclasp 

The lock and hinges of its wroughten gate 
Does labor, patience, pain and time require. 

Let us then turn once, see what we have gained ; 
Our conquered spoils are piling high and higher; 

Know we their purpose as it was ordained? 
Have we half ascertained what they can teach? 

Some that we clutch with zeal and then throw by 
Perhaps do hold the highest we can reach. 

The very things for which we vainly cry. 
The weaving, shifting, everchanging work 

Of nature 's operations manifold. 
Do they not bring a message that we shirk 

119 



And never understand though ever told? 
The good and beautiful and patient care 

That nature shows in her phenomena, 
Coiild we ask more in our impulsive prayer, 

A sweeter, kinder sunshine? Elijah, 
Surrounded by grand nature, had he more 

Or less than we? We have the still small voice, 
More true than oracle of ancient lore, 

To calm our fears and make the soul rejoice. 
The still, small voice, the windstorm and the flame 

All show the intricate and wondrous plan 
Of the most common thing; and all proclaim 

How great must be the destiny of man. 
To us the flowers and the birds can carry 

Food so our flagging strength may be restored 
If we in prayerful mood would learn to tarry 

And here, as elsewhere, wait upon the Lord. 
Come all my zealous loved ones, who are tired 

Of wrangling words and self-asserting strife 
In nature read, if you can read inspired, 

A symbol of a godly Christian life ; 
And note how busily she does bestir 

Herself; how patiently she perseveres; 
How modestly she labors, even where 

120 



No eyes can notice and no prompter cheers. 
And when her work is done, may it now be 

A splendid rose ; or a delicious cherry 
To kiss a child 's sweet lips ; or a grand tree 

Affording shade ,• or else some little furry 
Wild creature scampering through the leafy bushes ; 

Or mountain with its outline grand and high ; 
Exhaustless river rolling by the rushes ; 

A glorious sunset painted in the sky; 
Creation of a world from plastic mould 

Surrounded by its ever-circling spheres; 
A solar system, full, complete and rolled 

Out into trackless space ; the smiles and tears 
Of human beings and their love's sweet sway; 

All these and more : when nature turns them out 
As finished product, she makes no display 

Of her achievements, nor with swaggering spout 
Announces things that are yet to be done. 

And more, you never see her, though her hands 
Invisible are busily working on 

A thousand tasks. And softly she commands 
Her willing hosts to finish with dispatch 

Some labor that is pressing, or with slow 
And patient painstaking to wait and catch 

121 



The supreme moment for a sudden blow 
That sends the aim of thousand summers home. 

And when on nature's forge, weltering in white 
And palpitating heat and livid spume, 

The metal lies expectant, she is right 
At hand to form and fashion her design 

And to manipulate the lambent mass 
To her own will and purpose ; to combine 

And weld it for the service that it has 
With drastic action or with tempered touch. 

Or, here, in active silence, she will bide 
The long, long, laggard, lingering years that stretch 

Across eternity, to meet some tide 
With which she has a dim and distant date, 

Whose swelling surge was sent to lift and land 
Her vessel with its long commissioned freight, 

Upon the moorage of some needier strand. 
Thus operating, nature, quite unseen, 

Remains in modest sweet retirement ; 
From her example Christians may glean 

How true, to man, God keeps His covenant." 
Mute ceased. Like some undaunted mariner 

That ventured out upon a charmed sea 
And with his frail and fragile bark skirts far 

122 



Along the magic shore, till he can see 
The golden pinnacles of cities gleam, 

Islanded on the bosom of the deep, 
Light-rays of dazzling wealth toward him stream 

Which his distraught bewildered senses steep 
Into a state of longing. So seemed Mute 

And all of us, approaching to a state 
Where language fails, lips falter and are mute 

Because their pregnant burden is too great. 

The useful Arts together with the Fine 

Were next the subject of our comrade Ghice ; 
His hands were educated to design 

And work ingenious things. He had a nice 
Selecting taste to choose or to eschew 

The fittest and his mind, executive 
Of all his clever talents, could imbue 

The things he wrought with worth. His words I 
give: 
"The useful arts take of the many sides 

Of education or accomplishments 
A rank quite high. Few subjects made such strides 

In latter years of progress. Man invents, 
Constructs, a thousand handy things ; uniting 

123 



The helpful forces which profusely teem 
Around him, docile, willing and inviting 

To be of service. This is shown by gleam 
Of fiery furnaces; by clouds of smoke 

"Which roll from lofty chimneys and the whirr 
And hum of wheel ; the whistles that convoke 

Men to their place of labor; and the stir 
Of myriad marts and lines of transportation ; 

The many and mysterious ways by which 
Man has with distant man communication 

E'en where need brooks no time a line to stretch." 
So Ghice discoursed, only in better words 

Than I can now repeat. He further claimed, 
That man's degree of cleverness accords 

With the degree of love at which he aimed. 
Man's cleverness bespeaks that man loves better 

And God vouchsafes to man these hidden gifts 
But as he learns by letter and by letter 

To spell and read with love. Slowly he lifts 
The veil from beneficial mysteries 

And leaves the light stream on a world that loves ; 
Proportionately answers human pleas. 

Man's genius He gives and He approves 
Proportionately to the love He finds. 

124 



That is the keynote of our progress here. 
Love paves the way and opes the doors for minds 

Like Edison's. He, the unquestioned peer, 
Along his line of research was brought forth 

By long love-vigils of past generation ; 
To claim that by his cleverness and worth 

Alone 'tis done would be a desecration. 
This marvelous gift of man could not endure 

"Within a mind that hates, and all his toil 
Might yet be lost ; for if man would abjure 

His love again these favors would recoil 
As evils of destruction on his head. 

For only love to man and God brings growth, 
And only by sweet love is wisdom sped, 

And only love can sanctify them both." 
After such strain of discourse Ghice now turned 

To the Fine Arts. The charmed circumstances 
"Which clustered 'round the subject when we learned 

Its beauties first, he painted to our fancies 
Afresh, and with sweet stealing words reviewed 

The sculptured masterpieces of the Greeks 
And their high-pillared temples. He renewed 

Our classic comradeship, which e'er bespeaks 
The hero-worship down the lapse of ages 

125 



"With the illustrious ones, the great immortal 
Ones, the painters, poets and the sages. 

Ghice waved his magic wand of thought — a portal 
Opened and we stepped into halls of fame. 

As if some great inspired architect 
Would go to classic Attica, reclaim, 

Eebuild and reconstruct some ruined, wrecked 
And massive, fallen temple to its fine 

And pristine virgin beauty and replace 
Each weather-beaten figure, each divine 

White-fluted carved column and each grace 
Of arch or cornice, vandal-scarred and old, 

And would restore it to its former guise; 
All that his friends may love-entranced behold 

And feast upon its sight their ravished eyes: 
So Ghice collected from the various realms 

Of art the choicest work, and built a true 
Art temple in a grove of classic elms 

Where only muse-invoked breezes blew 
In zephyr softness through its shady halls, 

Beset with sculptures of sublimest mould; 
Divinest paintings hung upon its walls 

Inshrined in ivory and chased gold; 
On oriental tessalated floors 

126 



Were richly wrought rare pattern and design ; 
And through its marble pillared corridors 

A measured music moved, dulcet, divine 
And softly stole upon the raptured hearing; 

Or now in volume and victorious sway 
Arose in joyful chorus as if nearing, 

Then falling, dying indistinct away. 
My apotheosis of the world's art 

Portrays but feebly Ghice's clear description, 
Yet he maintained that only a small part 

Of its grand beauty is of art's conception, 
That music, paintings, poems, carved stone 

Are not the art itself, they do but nourish 
And are like soil in which true art is grown, 

In which most favorably it will flourish. 
''For art," he said, ''is such a precious thing 

That it must have a grosser element, 
Surrounding it to stand the buffeting 

Of our rude, earthly hands; a diluent 
The heavenly draught to weaken and dilute. 

And temper it so that when it is placed 
Before us for enjoyment, it may suit 

The compass of our cruder earthly taste. 
Nor is it beauty that is art, although 

127 



It loves a beautiful environment; 
From under humblest colors it crops through ; 

Like prisoned bird, it breaks its tenement 
Singing a madrigal of alien climes 

A world-including song : one whose strains 
Familiar seem though distances and times 

Are whole eternities apart; refrains 
And echoes which have caught their full and deep 

Harmonious dominance from the creation, 
And yet so sweet their simple air can sweep 

The gamut of the heart's wide variation. 
Nor is it Truth that constitutes true art; 

Although that comes the nearest in approach 
Of its true definition, it falls short 

Of having that sublime exalted touch 
That makes immortal. There is nothing greater 

Upon this earth than the abiding presence 
The wielding, working Life of our Creator. 

He, being hidden, yet His darting essence 
Doth leave some land-marks in His winnowed trail; 

Some prints of His sequestered heavenly feet; 
The good will flutter or the bad will quail 

Instinctively whene 'er His holy, sweet 
And subtle being moves amid His creatures, 

128 



The changeless Real among the transitory; 
Some faint and fleeting outline of His features 

Is mirrored forth in nature's radiant glory, 
Some perfume ravishingly sweet and choice 

Drips where His trailing hidden garments brush, 
Some music echoes of the sweetest voice 

With reassurance through our senses rush; 
Some marks are on the ground where He has trailed 

His measuring line, where He approvingly 
Has struck His branding hammer or has nailed 

His gates fast shut to some great infamy. 
'Tis here the artist's world is to be found, 

His field of research, here inspired to sketch 
These half revealed forms, this holy ground; 

These sounds divine with profane ears to catch 
And so arrange that we may understand 

Their meaning and their source. Not to create, 
But to preserve these gathered glimpses and 

These vouchsafed God-traits to perpetuate. 
Like prudent house-wives, when warm summer 
weather 

Her cornucopia of delicious fruit 
Ripe into nature's lap does pour, will gather 

"With busy nimble hands the bursting sweet 

129 



And juicy peach, the damson, or the cherry, 

Plucking, as they in pendant clusters hang 
On the low-laden limbs; or luscious berry 

Growing in rich profusion. And the clang 
Of the receptacles is heard as brought 

Wide-mouthed to hold the crop in high-heaped 
measure. 
When some will quickly bear them home full- 
fraught ; 

While others in the kitchen take the treasure, 
Where the sweet, savoury fruit is quickly cleansed 

And heated on the merry fire, and after 
The glazen jars, long stored away, are rinsed, 

As cheery chaffing and sweet jocund laughter 
Go the delightful rounds, the jars are filled 

Sweet-fuming; and the round close-fitted cover 
Is then with wax hermetically sealed 

Thereon, so that, when prodigal summer's over 
And the bleak winds blow crooning out of doors. 

The thoughtful ever-planning housewife brings 
A frugal portion of her wintry stores. 

As sweet and fresh as when the robin swings 
Upon the swaying bough and eats of it : 

So does the artist bide a favored breeze 

130 



That makes the boughs bend low their burden sweet 

To pluck and gather fruit from heaven's trees ; 
So seems the artist's wish to stow away 

Gleaned snatches of the God-appearing light, 
Thinking perchance this ephemeral day 

"Will turn to desolate Erebian night, 
And all be lost had not his forethought saved 

A precious portion. Then should darkness fall, 
Could man no longer see the flag that waved 

Aloft in light ; should love and sweetness all 
Be drowned by chilly death-inviting hate 

And scorn and scoffing ; aye, should, sadly, even 
The shining sentinels at mercy's gate 

Withdraw and all the light and warmth from 
heaven 
Would seem beyond the reach of man; 'tis then 

The love-preserving artist hopes to keep 
Some glimmer of man 's God-like origin, 

Some dream of heaven to inspire his sleep. 
Some image — nay, some portion of the real. 

And so he did when the dark ages brooded 
O'er man's spiritual world; his work was leal 

To its intended purpose, and secluded 
In hearts and homes and temples steadfastly, 

131 



Serenely kept aglow some living faith ; 
Like to a beacon-light that patiently 

Shows the benighted soul a heaven-ward path. 
*Tis said of latter years that art declines ; 

It is because this earth-eclipsing vapour 
Is pierced, and heaven now more brightly shines, 

There is less need of canvas, stone or paper 
Or sweep of music 's symphony impassioned. 

Since man has learned the highest form of art 
Is not embodied by them but is fashioned 

Not with these human hands but in the heart. 
Since man does in a measure realize 

The ever-present Prototype of art. 
E'en as He flourishes in paradise, 

Yearns for enthronement in the human heart. 
So art may by its own realization 

Be quite dispensed with or at least diminished. 
And still we sat in silent contemplation 

Of art long after Ghice had finished. 

The sixth one now began. We called him Judge. 

He was discriminating, cool and wary. 
'Twas of love 's banter that we called him such, 

And yet he served as our judiciary ; 

132 



In many a mooted hard-fought altercation 

He soothed our quarrels and umpired our sports 
And no appeal from his adjudication 

Was ever taken to the higher courts, 
So amply was he loved, so well respected. 

Philosophy in general was his theme. 
The building ground was what he first inspected 

Whereon does rest the universal scheme 
Of things that are. Then Science he outlined ; 

Philosophy; he said, "The subject-matter 
Is same in both. All sciences combined 

Do constitute the province of the latter. 
And yet the different sciences are merely 

Few carved, well-fitted stones laid in the wall 
Of some great half-seen building. Men would early, 

Taking their cue and fashion from that small 
And well-shown section of the structure, try 

To finish out its walls up to the towers, 
And model the foundation stones that lie 

Beneath the masonry. With all the powers 
Of mind, man tried, down through the passing ages, 

To picture out the structure as complete 
And figure out on what it stands. The sages 

Bent on deciphering the form of it 

133 



And purpose, saw naught save a meager section 

Of wall, whereon is seen the chisel's mark. 
Well-laid, well- joined in workmanlike perfection 

Above it, and below it all is dark. 
And so they reasoned that this wall must rest 

On some well-bedded and secure foundation; 
And that it has foundation does attest 

That it may also have an elevation, 
A roof with many spires, reaching high. 

And so each one in miniature would plan 
A model as he thought would best comply 

"With this strange fragment, clearly seen by man. 
And as one built, the next would come along 

And tear it down by showing its defects 
And build again. The next would prove it wrong 

Showing again how illy it connects 
With the known portion. He in turn would build 

So spleudid, that the world for years agreed 
It was the true one. But one better skilled 

In philosophic architecture freed 
Men from their error, showing them the bond 

Between its dwarfed and deformed top and rafter 
And their support did poorly correspond ; 

Was so grotesque that it was fit for laughter. 

134 



Avoiding former errors, this one too 

Would make an effort to complete the wall 
Then other would arise with clearer view 

And all his well-planned theories will fall. 
Again, some labor to supply a base 

And bottom layer to support the weight 
Of the great structure ; to fill out the place 

Invisible to them with adequate 
Foundation that is fitting to uphold 

This mystic, half-concealed, half-guessed-at build- 
ing. 
Here the same trouble ; scarce has one in bold 

And massive masonry, with cement welding 
The well-hewn blocks, planned out a firm foundation, 

Then comes another, shows it is too light 
And but a poor and flimsy imitation 

Of what it should be were it modeled right. 
It has been said the compass of our hearing 

Is only meager, and the deeper tones 
And deeper joynotes may be grandly quiring 

In unheard harmony. Perhaps the moans 
From deepest depths are never heard. They say. 

But broken echoes of the higher strains 
May reach us. Then the cry of agony 

135 



Most piercing or the keenest joy refrains 
May not be heard by mortal man. If God 

Should play His organ of eternal build 
And cause its tones to surge along the broad 

And spacious galleries until it filled 
The universe with music ; and the bass 

In fullest diapason canvassed all 
Its range ; Sopran and treble would embrace 

The greatest compass ; aiid its tones would roll 
In ever-varying modulated flood 

Full-measured, so that all the worlds would hang 
Upon its strains in listening attitude ; 

As when the morning-stars together sang. 
If then it were vouchsafed to mortal man 

To listen, he could only hear the tones 
Within his compass ; only those that ran 

Within a certain scope. The music zones 
Above that or below would to his ear 

Be muteness. Portions of sweet harmony 
Would come to him. Rare fragments as it were 

Of some grand tune. Such is Philosophy. 
And men have tried to find the missing strain 

Which they can never hear or comprehend 
With earthly senses. Yet the long, long train 

136 



Of men of thought, whose researches extend 
Down through the epochs of the centuries, 

Who tried to scan the realms of the unknown, 
Although they could not solve the mysteries 

Surrounding life and death, yet we must own 
They helped the human race that bravely fought 

The fight with darkness ; though they did not show 
"What wisdom is, they showed what it is not; 

That is perhaps the manner we may know 
The way to heaven. When once we have learned 

All ways of error that we pronely trod. 
Perhaps our wandering footsteps may he turned 

In, to the path that leads to God." 

We met at the "Bed-rock" as we were wont 

To hear the seventh pay his moiety 
Of love's instruction, sympathy's comment 

On man's religion, God's divinity. 
That was his subject. We had never need 

Of him when victory smiled ; but when defeat 
Came he was always looked upon to lead 

Our routed ruined forces in retreat. 
We called him Rally, for when things looked dark, 

When hope burned but in low and lurid blaze, 

137 



When faithful efforts failed far from the mark 

Set up and hindrances beset our ways ; 
Or when by our mistakes we sorrowing went 

Into the valley of humiliation, 
'Twas then our slow dejected steps we bent 

To this our friend for cheer and consolation. 
"Wax, Ghice, Script, Mute and all the rest of us 

Hailed him with loving words when he arose. 
"We told him the program's arrangement was 

Quite fortunate ; 'twas fitting he should close. 
For we had in the open been defeated 

Through our own short-comings and ignorance. 
Pressed by life 's questioners, we had retreated 

Into the last stronghold of our defense ; 
And that his coming now is opportune ; 

"We needed leadership, since we had failed ; 
Since we, retreating, did not know how soon 

Our last entrenched redoubt may be assailed. 
But Rally answered : ' ' Nay, you bravely fought ; 

You scoured the country from all sides, and all 
Your enemies fled cravenly and sought 

A refuge in their fort, behind their wall. 
But now with grave responsibility 

You load me down when you make this appeal 

138 



To me, that I should lead to victory. 

I fear there 's not enough of godly zeal 
Within my heart to try to take by storm 

The strong-hold of the world's great unbelief. 
I must regret that I am not in form 

For heavy fighting, lacking myself the chief 
Accoutrements of war, the proper weapons 

And armor trappings to equip a knight. 
So he may bravely meet whatever happens 

To cross his path in this important fight. 
Have we now tested to our satisfaction 

That some great prize, much lauded and much 
vaunted, 
Is held out to the soul 's determined action ; 

Concerted let us strive with hearts undaunted. 
For in our past discourses we have learned 

There is a common thing that we desire ; 
Something for which a kingdom might be spurned, 

Something the holy angels do admire, 
Something so precious that my lips are loath 

And powerless to express. We only know 
The semblances with which heaven does clothe 

Its inward worth. And of its perfect glow 
A fragment only fills our feeble mind ; 

139 



Like scientists will eatch a ray of light 
Into a darkroom where it will not blind 

Or dazzle their experimenting sight. 
So I will not presume to all-embrace 

The transcendental reaches of my theme, 
But will walk humbly, only try to trace 

Some visions which like pictures in a dream 
Have come and gone, leaving their faint impress 

Upon the plastic tablets of my heart. 
Like camera set in the wilderness 

Films from elusive nature's life a part, 
Or rather like a student that peruses 

Some epic of an age's literature. 
Grasps here and there the meaning of the muses 

Although much of its wealth remains obscure. 
In meekness would I speak, not make pretense 

That I can sound the God-depths or can scan 
The hidden wisdom or the providence 

Of heaven's great all-comprehending plan." 
' ' Now Rally turned, ' ' continued our sage, 

"To speak to us in parable and story, 
Regaled our seeking souls with many a page 

At random from his book of allegory, 
Of which a few from memory I relate ; 

140 



But with his words there came the fondest craving 
Like when we are to meet friends who await 

Our coming, and to us sweet hands are waving. ' ' 

"In that fraught period when a sober change 

Comes 'er the youthful mind and makes it grave, 
I found myself one day as on a strange 

Mysterious shore. The restless lapping wave 
That threw untiringly up on the beach 

The round-worn, disk-shaped pebble also teemed 
With something singular, and yet my speech 

Could not express wherein the difference seemed. 
I thought it odd that there should be a change 

In nature's staid unchangeable apparel. 
The sky was deeper blue. There was a strange 

Charm in the flower's grace and the bird's carol. 
As if in penetration I had gained 

A higher sense, enabling me to see 
Environing things that heretofore remained 

Hidden or overlooked. Like tapestry 
Of such old costly fabric that with wonder 

"We oft had traced its texture and admired 
Its workmanship, but never saw that under 

Its dainty weft a full-wrought and inspired 

141 



Embroidery of rare design appears, 

A master-piece of art in living guise 
Like a perspective from the legend years 

At once unveils to shame our careless eyes. 
So nature had, it seemed, in this new land 

Its old familiar garb ; but emphasized 
And heightened so that from the little, grand, 

Deep meanings cropped out, heretofore disguised. 
I was like one, lost in familiar woods. 

In circle wanders till his reversed bearing 
Misleads, and he knows not his own few roods 

Of land, knows not his own house in the clearing. 
So, common things I failed to recognize 

By cursory glance, because the atmosphere 
Of strangeness pictured out what underlies 

All things, rather than such as they appear. 
And something deeper, from life, I divined. 

Occasionally I obtained a glimpse 
Into the regions that the casual mind 

Engrossed in earthly business only skimps. 
And in those deeper moments I saw crews 

Of spirits peopling gapes of tangible things, 
I saw them glide along earth 's avenues 

And heard the winnowing of their waving wings. 

142 



My mind was keener to the sense of pain 

And more alive to all the joys and woes, 
Heart-hungers and soul-longings, the whole train 

That make up life. But here I will disclose 
My pilgrimage in sketches and narrate 

Some things that did befall me in this land, 
And in the form of allegory state 

Some visions and some views from yonder strand. ' ' 

"Methought I wandered on a highway, flanked 

On either side by grain-fields and by fallows, 
The road-side sward was fresh and flowerbanked 

And brooklets gurgled over cooling shallows. 
As I walked on I pictured in my mind 

How generous and happy they must be 
"Who lived where nature is so sweet and kind 

And heaven in hand-reach, as it seemed to me. 
I met two strangers, but my kindly greeting 

Seemed lost on these ; they only scowled and 
stared 
And made some slur expression in retreating, 

Intending that by me it should be heard. 
Sneeringly they turned and noted what effect 

It had on me, as if to test their skill 

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And their success in trying to inject 

Hate into me, who never wished them ill. 
Grieving at this, not on account of fear 

But rather that my love-plan was frustrated, 
I met another stranger whose good cheer 

Me with the world again conciliated; 
For he gave love. And I felt it was not 

Because he had some sinister intent, 
'Twas not the gain my love should hring, he sought, 

But rather love seemed the chief element 
Of his existence. Like life that bestows 

Upon each member of the human race 
An equal portion. Like the sunshine strows 

Sweet flowers for the virtuous and the base 
With soft love-gushes in the vernal season ; 

So was this new-found friend that I embraced. 
Confiding in him then I asked the reason 

Why those two had my love so illy graced. 
He answered me, "The poor deluded ones 

Still think the keynote of this, our existence, 
Is rapinCj gain. Like the wild beast that runs 

Its victim down they offer fierce resistance 
To any force or power that would deny 

To them the longest end, the biggest share. 

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They think the game of life is to pile high 

Their spoils, plundered by force and guile and 
snare. 
These two are jealous, for they thought you might 

Perhaps compete with them in exploitations 
Or that perhaps you would assume the right 

To curb their predatory occupations. 
If they had only thought that they could use you 

Your love had met with different result 
With blandished offers they would then enthuse you, 

Invite you to become one of their cult. 
Some clubs are bad, and young men have to choose 

Between alternatives ; either retire 
From combinations of this sort and lose 

The gains of earth, or else lose something higher. 
There is a cult that it is safe to join, 

Its doors are free and open to all men. 
It takes not social station, health or coin 

To be a member ; even a Magdalen 
Or a poor slave, deserted age, ill-fated 

Time-serving culprit, or a millionaire, 
Or royal blood may be initiated 

Without another witness being there. 
The pass-word "love" is born within the soul 

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Of those who join this unassuming order; 
They need no badge or token ; they enroll 

Their consecrated names with the Recorder 
In heaven. The lowly One who came to found 
It, said it had no worldly bounds or bars, 
But came like music of the wild wind 's sound ; 

As strange as birth, as growth or light of stars; 
He said 'twas like the alchemy of rain 

Upon the tender roots suffering from dearth ; 
Like the soil-process of the growing grain ; 

Like fountain-waters bubbling from the earth ; 
Or like the subtle chemistry that flushes 

With down the lily's vestures and that brews 
Its free-strewn fragrance ; like the night that hushes ; 

Like voice of waking dawn ; like morning dews. 
He said that it was like the rolling thunder 

And flash concatenating through the sky 
That tears the body and the soul asunder 

And leaves man naked, to ask where and why. 
He said, like from the mystic realms of birth 

Inceptive life and growth comes unto men 
So from a higher secret must come forth 

The life whereunto man is born again." 
Thus in sweet converse my new friend and I 

146 



Our friendship sealed, easting our minds about 
How we could better strive to hold on high 

Love's pass-word. My friend said, if there was 
doubt 
In meeting strangers, how they are disposed 

Toward us or our coming, we should go 
And whisper "love," and it will be disclosed. 

All their heart-fostered purposes will show. 
We parted then and each his several ways 

Pursued alone, but ever and anon 
Each as by understanding turned to gaze 

And follow with his eyes the other one. 

"Me-thought that once my pathway came by chance 

Upon a spacious lofty power-station 
And from it issued many meshed strands 

Of cables used for current-transportation. 
And as I entered at its open door 

A humming sound of action met my ear. 
And silent forces moved from floor to floor 

In measured swiftness, till the atmosphere 
Seemed sympathetic with their thrilling motion. 

I saw One there. Serene intelligence 
Was written in his mien, and stern devotion 

147 



To his entrusted charge. His eyes from thence 
Did rarely wander, and he moved among 

The throbbing armatures and mechanism 
And wires charged with hidden, swift and strong 

Death-dealing currents with due criticism 
For every hitch or flaw; adjusting here. 

Connecting there, with quick tool-bearing hands; 
No matter what requirements would appear 

He was prepared to answer their demands. 
He seemed to never pay the least attention 

To any visitors. Like one engrossed, 
Cut off from every other intervention 

Save that on which his consciousness is lost. 
Some claimed that He was changed to a machine 

Himself, and was himself in strange subjection 
To his own regulated force-routine, 

So swift and silent was his mode of action. 
And in my soul there came a great desire 

To breathe the charmed word into the ear 
Of this strange one. And drawing gently nigher 

I spoke the word with trembling and with fear — 
When lo, to my surprise, the salutation 

Made him turn to me with a gracious smile. 
And come to me. Yet without relaxation 

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The spinning generators all the while 
Continued to their labors to attend. 

He, greeting me, spoke with benign concern 
About my journey, asking me to spend 

The evening with him so that we might learn 
To know each other. As we walked along 

The busy street an aged woman slipped, 
And he was quickly at her side with strong 

Support. We met a vagrant child that wept. 
He ministered to its necessity 

In food and warmth. We met a crippled man 
To whom he gave a healing remedy. 

His children welcomed him with kisses, ran 
To meet his coming home with shouts of glee. 

That eve while to his wise discourse I listened, 
I asked my kind host how it came to be 

That on his labor bent he seemed so distant 
And unapproachable. "It makes some think 

That you do not concern yourself with men 
Nor with man's thirst or hunger, meat or drink, 

Nor with his love or joy or hope or pain. 
But only with the current and its flow. 

Its generation, and its safe control. 
But now that I have learned your worth, I know 

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Of none with finer sympathy of soul. ' ' 
But kindly he, "They are but instruments, 

The power-house is but the feeding source 
Of myriad charged strands that issue thence 

To carry swift and far their cabled force. 
And though I seem to have naught else in mind 

But mere mechanical control of forces, 
Yet every wire has its work to find 

And through each insulated strand there courses 
A mission pulsing to its destination 

And every cable bears a burning burden, 
A task assigned, a sacred obligation, 

A deed of charity or well-earned guerdon. 
One current does a piece of work that makes 

A thousand franchised child-hands wave with glee ; 
Another like a wizard charms the aches 

From tired limbs of man-made slavery ; 
One runs a factory — where shoes are made, 

One pair among the many is not lost. 
For when I sped the current swift, I bade 

Them shield a poor child's feet from cold and frost. 
Another strand brings light — the festive halls 

Where beauty moves in soft melodic measures 
Are flooded splendour; then again it falls 

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In muffled rays where sleep, the sweetest treasures 
A father or a mother has ; one wave 

I bid speed where through lonely hours of night 
A widow for her children toils, to save 

Her over-tasked self -immolated sight; 
Another turns the wheel with magic quickness 

That drives the car to bring loved ones together; 
Another bears a telegram of sickness 

And brings the matchless nursing of a mother 
To her sick child. Thus in a thousand ways 

I have in mind the distant waiting aid 
And its accomplishment. For every phase 

Of want I have my wire-lines quickly laid 
Close to the human heart." Then I confessed, 

With thanks, that he had made my question clear; 
But that his gentle answer does suggest 

Another question, this : " ' ^ It does appear 
That you transmit along conducting strands 

The streams of rescuing and helpful action; 
Why do you then not bring to needy hands 

That which would give forever satisfaction? 
Why do you not then bring the feverish brow 

Health that would never yield to grim disease? 
Why do you not bring those that suffer now 

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Permanent comfort and eternal ease? 
Why do you then not bring to hunger's pain 

A wave of wealth that need can not exhaust — 
Why can the mourning one then not regain 

His absent loved one, never to be lost? 
Why can your lunging current not baptize 

Man with the chrism of a deathless seal? 
I ask this humbly, knowing you are wise 

And willing to instruct and to reveal 
Your will. ' ' He answered not as one confused 

But rather like one the whole world addressing; 
"In two ways can this offered power be used 

As far as it would be to man a blessing. 
For parallel with every stretched strand 

There lies another hidden to your senses, 
The one supplies the physical demand 

The other the spiritual dispenses. 
Although the line that may be seen confers 

Not all you mentioned, yet it has been known 
To store up fuel for a million years 

That some day it may be to man a boon. 
But if you want the things you pleaded for. 

Draw largely on the current that is hidden; 
It will work all those miracles and more, 

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Is ever ready to assist when bidden. 
And if your needs have once out-grown the first 

Lines of supply, and you have a desire 
At heaven 's deeper fount to slake your thirst 

Draw on the hidden current that is higher. 
Installed high over the eternal gates 

Of helping heaven is a wireless station 
Where, bent on love, a smiling angel waits 

To quickly answer each communication," 

"I heard a moaning, deep and half-suppressed, 

But ever since in this new land I found me 
I always heard that moan and rightly guessed 

That it came from the hearts of those around me. 
With their approach came consciousness of low 

Lamenting. First with special grief I linked 
This sad escaping of an overflow 

Of hidden pain. But more and more distinct 
I heard from all I met a quiet moan. 

Not as from some great momentary anguish, 
But like some deep relentless woe had grown 

And slowly filled the heart and made it languish 
In suffering. It sounded as the dripping 

Of some long, lingering and remorseless pain 

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So old that, though the heart still feels the gripping, 

It has worn out the impress on the brain. 
It was a special gift I had, to hear 

This secret, sad and silent heart-complaint; 
For few it seemed could hear their neighbor's drear 

Lament ; its eommon-ness made it seem faint. 
To me their faces some deep pain portrayed 

Which I could read, though many tried to hide it. 
I asked of one, what bitter grief had made 

Him lowly wailing, as he went ; He chided 
Me for inquiring thus and seemed to fear 

That I might ridicule, which from my heart 
Was farthest, for no one could learn to hear 

This secret sorrow and then act the part 
Of scoffing at it, or refuse to pity, 

For its low cry would wring your soul to weeping 
With it. Threading my way in some great city 

Between the crowd that constantly is sweeping 
Along its pavement, there I heard and found 

That it was loudest where the crush for wealth 
Was heaviest, though it was partly drowned 

In the fierce din. Where poverty and filth 
Reign undisputed in the crowded squalor, 

As well as where all luxuries are heaped 

154 



That can be bought with the almighty dollar; 

Alike the human soul in pain is steeped. 
I bent my steps to places where the sport, 

The revel and enjoyment hold full sway; 
Where people flocked their moments to divert 

To find oblivion in soft gayety. 
But as I scanned these merry pleasure-seekers 

I heard a sigh between each burst of laughter; 
Like when between the ripples of the breakers 

The deep sea sighs. I noticed, too, that after 
Their revelry had ceased their lowly wail 

Was louder; like when flowing waters, pent 
By some obstruction, gather force to scale 

And sweep away their brief impediment. 
Some bolder ones pretended to ignore 

This sign of suffering and would boast about 
The calm, cold equanimity they wore. 

Their fine sang-froid that nothing could put out. 
Yet all their boasting was a mockery; 

Their haughty manner, self-sufficient mien 
Which they put on was like a parody 

Upon the anguish that they tried to screen. 
And yet these wailings did not all express 

The self -same woe ; some had a different strain. 

155 



Most of them wept as one in deep distress, 

One who had in himself the cause of pain; 
Some few in soft low utterance of grief 

No pangs, I thought, of personal pain expressed 
But crying pity, seemed to be the chief 

Incentive to the sorrow they confessed. 
I met them here and there, and their heart-vents 

Seemed altogether of a different strain, 
Sad, yearning love was in the utterance; 

And sympathy the heart could not retain. 
To one of these I breathed the charmed word. 

He, turning kindly to me, I inquired 
The reason why this difference occurred. 

He told me then of something that transpired 
In his own life that caused this transformation. 

He said that formerly in his own breast 
The other cry sought ever for expression 

And his heart-sorrow would not give him rest. 
He said, "And I went suffering like these 

With a pain-burden I could hardly bear 
Until I heard of One that could give ease 

To weary, heavy-laden ones ; and there 
And then I sought him not in vain. 

Like one, enthralled in tensioned throes of dread 

156 



Disease, when fever numbs his throbbing brain, 

For days and weeks confines him to his bed, 
At once amends as one from death redeemed 

And blithesome life's recuperated sway- 
Finds sweet new joy in living; so I seemed 

"When from my soul the burden rolled away. 
Or like a prisoner, that years had spent 

In a dim dungeon, till his friends were stones 
And subterranean damp his element. 

And the dank walls had grown into his bones. 
Regains his freedom unexpectedly 

And walks out into blessed summerlight, 
And breathes the bouyant air, drinks in the free 

And balmy breeze and feasts his starved sight 
On tree and flower-bloom, and his dulled hearing 

On nature 's music ; so was I when once 
The painful wretchedness I had been bearing 

Was taken away. The woe of others haunts 
Me now and has become an anxious sorrow 

And pity often rends my soul to weeping. 
I pity those that go on in their narrow 

Joy-quests, on their own hearts more trouble 
heaping. 
I pity those that hate, I know their hate 

157 



Will breed a larger share of woe for them 
Than all their hate for others could create; 

"Will bring a punishment that naught can stem. 
I pity those that bind themselves together 

For harmful purposes, for well I know 
The fellest hurt they can invent sinks rather 

Into the hearts of those that strike the blow. 
I pity nations when sheer selfish pride 

Plunges them into war of unjust wrath, 
There may be many trophies to divide, 

One of them is a woesome aftermath. 
The Man of Sorrows understands the sources 

And is acquainted with the grief of earth 
He knows its origin, the baleful forces 

That nurture it and bring about its birth. 
He also knows a full and sovereign cure." 

The man then smiled at me and bid me grace 
And I went musing on this adventure, 

Thrice turning back, then going on apace." 

"Methought I saw a motley throng with much 
Wrought up excitement crowd an arched door; 

Their faces made me lag my steps and watch 
The various expressions that they wore. 

158 



Some portrayed deepest hate and imprecations, 

I heard the hot-breathed curses from their lips. 
And others tried with sundry disputations 

To justify their view. As when pain grips 
The human heart into a vise until 

The face seems but a single line of pain, 
So seemed the mien of two. My heart grew chill 

At their low lamentation and I fain 
Would speak the charmed word that I had learned; 

And when I uttered it they straight- way fell 
To weeping bitterly. The foul-mouthed turned, 

And sputtering up came words not fit to tell, 
And hell's vocabulary was exhausted 

In wicked sneer and insolent guffaw 
With which this heart-grief 's outbreak was accosted. 

I raised my eyes to understand and saw 
An open hall-way and a door that led 

Into a court of justice. Thence I entered 
And will relate what here was done and said : 

The interest of the audience was centered 
On judge and lawyers and the one arraigned. 

This one arrested long my mustering eyes. 
His face to me a mystery remained ; 

It showed, I knew not which, if joys, if sighs. 

159 



For of all depths of untold pain some traces 

Were mirrored forth half -hidden in his mien ; 
All the familiar half -forgotten graces 

That ever touched my life with hope, were seen; 
And all the tenderness that ever wreathed 

Itself around my poor existence, even 
That which I spurned. Again there breathed 

A sadness from him like blest ones in heaven 
"Will breathe in prayer whene 'er they see on earth 

Their loved ones walk with wilful steps in sin. 
And patience and long-suffering shone forth 

As though he suffered long, long hate, to win 
For love the following eternities; 

As though for eons suffering sorrow's throe 
To win thereafter endless years of bliss. 

To win the world from hate, from sin and woe. 
And in the anguish of my heart I cried 

Unconsciously, "What has this good man done?' 
Some one beside me whispered, "He is tried 

For lese iniquite, and there is none 
Can save him from the tentacles that reach 

Out from the realms of sin and hate and spite. 
All his young years were spent in love to teach 

These men accusing him a way they might 

160 



Lead juster lives and be through grace reborn. 

But this implied that they were sinful men, 
Which they resented with most bitter scorn 

And sought to wreak their vengeance on him. 
When 
To prosecute they found no legal cause, 

They trumped up one, and have him here in court. 
0, but the bitterness against him draws 

An ugly crowd; he is their obscene sport, 
But hate is cousin to obscenity. 

The one will breed the other. How they hate 
The very sight of him ! Yea, verily, 

Their feet are swift to crowd him to hijl fate. 
But listen now, the witnesses are called. ' ' 

These were lined up and sworn to speak the truth. 
The first one in the witness-chair installed 

Was some pseudo-detective, whose uncouth 
Service with other's money had been hired 

To dog his footsteps, gather evidence 
Or manufacture such as is required 

By evil men to convict innocence. 
His purpose was by sundry fabrication 

To show the marvelous shrewdness of his game, 
And by undoing this man 's reputation 

161 



To earn his money and increase his fame. 
But as a witness he was ill at ease, 

Like one that had unduly been beguiled 
To load some guiltless one with infamies 

Or fasten some stern stigma on a child. 
Then followed others on the witness-stand ; 

One said that the accused man's every act 
Stood like a grave reproach which seemed to brand 

His own career and show wherein it lacked. 
Another claimed the quiet, silent sway 

And living sentiment of the accused 
Was hindrance to him in a business way 

And opposite to that which he infused. 
Then one was called to give his evidence 

Who was of haughty bearing, proud of self, 
His wealth gave him an air of insolence. 

'Twas he that hired the sleuth ; his bribing pelf 
Was at the bottom of the whole affair. 

Had not the culprit braved his great displeasure 
By teaching things which he regarded were 

Not in accordance with the mete and measure 
Which he had set? It is a common failing 

Of men who have acquired sudden wealth 
To ween that they are fit to lead in scaling 

162 



The higher realms ; to think their cunning stealth 
Adapts them to entrap the heavenly guests 

That bring God's wealth from heaven. They for- 
get 
The coveted gift for hoarding wealth invests 

Men's souls not with the noblest tunic yet, 
That gift is but of mediocre grade. 

So, this one thought his shrewdness now should 
hold 
All men. And when his mind failed to persuade 

He often used persuasion of his gold 
To fashion things to his way and to coach 

The issues to his much-desired end. 
First, he proved that he was above reproach 

By listing virtues that should recommend 
Him to the world. He gave unto the poor ; 

He often prayed in public ; and his name 
Had oft been advertised from door to door ; 

The public papers had extolled his fame. 
"And this defendant, whose significance 

Is nothing, says that a poor widow's mite 
Does count for more than the munificence 

Of all such princely gifts. He does incite 
With his strange doctrine and his scurvy creeds 

163 



Men to spurn such conventionalities 
That stood the test of years. And thus he leads 

Men's hearts to strange and perverse deities." 
Such was his evidence. With pompous air 

He looked about the room, self-justified. 
And many a vengeful look and spiteful glare 

Sought out the object that his wrath defied. 
And men like he, God pity their blind zest, 

God pity their misguided ignorance. 
Urged by relentless hate, they never rest 

Until some martyr's blood is on their hands. 
On the court's call none rose to take the part 

If him accused. His friends had skulked from 
thence. 
Save two that loved him. The judge in his heart 

Knew well of this man's gentle innocence 
Yet the wild spirit of the mob now showed 

A thirst for vengeance that could not be stemmed, 

And he gave way to its relentless goad, 

The good and gentle victim was condemned. 
And then methought I saw a wondrous sight : 

A being like a blessed shade with grace 
Unspeakable, in raiment, flowing white, 

And with ecstatic joy upon the face, 

164 



Came gliding swiftly up the crowded aisle, 

Embraced the sentenced man and kissed his brow, 
Assured him with a sweet victorious smile 

That though he was condemned, high heaven now 
Regarded him as one that did his duty. 

And then I thought that other shining ones 
Arrayed in vestments of transcendent beauty 

Approached. I marveled at these denizens 
From higher realms, and at their interest 

That brought them here to earth with some high 
plan 
Of love and grace divinely manifest 

Toward this friendless outcast of a man. 
None seemed to notice these, or fear, or wonder — 

Then suddenly I understood aright 
That, though invisible, their holy splendour 

"Was vouchsafed to my poor unworthy sight. 
The prisoner with stern words was led out 

Midst scoffing looks of satisfied revenge. 
The shining shades still circled him about. 

One passing near me, I wished to exchange 
The secret word and witness its effect ; 

I spoke, and in the guise of some sweet woman 
She turned. If the Creator should select 

165 



All worthy virtues ever found in human 
Soul-depths, and all pain-purchased strength and 
light 

That ever agony of soul did glean 
By patient heroism in the fight 

For soul-enfranchisement; if He between 
The lapses of these human virtues showered 

Quintessent grace-gifts from the realms divine ; 
And then with his creative word empowered 

These attributes, so chosen, to combine 
And take upon themselves a human form ; 
So seemed the one that I in awe addressed 
With winged words. By her sweet mien the storm 

That swayed my heart was quickly set at rest. 
* ' Why is it that this judged one, ' ' I inquired, 

"Who drew such bitter hatred on his head, 
Who now goes there, forsaken, undesired, 

Despised as one from whom his friends have fled, 
One who has been defeated, and the brand 

Of ignominy fastens, and success 
Now seems forever to slip from his hand, 

And failure mocks him with its bitterness ; 
Why it is, such as he is worthy deemed 

Of your divine attention and regard; 

166 



And favors, such as man has never dreamed 

To get, are lavished on him as reward?" 
And she replied with winged words, "Success 

He has attained, and of the highest order; 
Aye, he was watched with anxious eagerness, 

And heaven with gladness overflowed its border 
When found that he had stood the great ordeal. 

Do you not understand, are you so slow 
To comprehend what is the high ideal 

Of heaven ? Nineteen hundred years ago 
There was One suffered the utmost disgrace 

And punishment, though guiltless of offense, 
Yet if you follow out the blessed trace 

Of that One's everlasting influence, 
You will not say that He has been defeated 

Although He died forsaken and alone. 
Thus ever must these struggles be repeated." 

I raised my eyes to thank her. She was gone. 

"Night reigned. But looking from my hill aloft 
The blackness of the sky seemed broken by 

Numberless stars that studded with their soft 
Eefulgence heaven's arched canopy. 

The chaste, transparent light, evenly given 

167 



The wide expanse of earth, fell like a token 
Flung over from the parapets of heaven, 

Pledging God's constancy, endless, unbroken — 
I looked again and I was seized with wonder. 

It seemed that every star scowled at his neighbor, 
Their calm sweet harmony was rent asunder ; 

Like boys with fuss and wrangle o'er their labor, 
Each claimed to be the cause of all the light, 

With rush and flare they tried to snuff each other, 
They quite forgot that each was satellite 

And closely bound to some revolving brother. 
It seemed that I could hear their wordy cavil, 

One told the second what the third had done ; 
One said," your light was kindled by the devil, 

It has a different luster from my own. ' ' 
It seemed to me the heaviest commotion 

"Was that they charged each other with collusion 
And stealing from the bottom of the ocean 

The gold that glittered there in rich profusion. 
The sky was full of blazing scrapping flare, 

Those of an ampler light like termagents 
With menacing contortions tried to stare 

Their humbler neighbors out of countenance. 
I hid my face in shame. Could it then be 

168 



The everlasting stars I love so much, 
"Which often in their calm serenity 

Were my faith's anchor, could they stoop to such 
A low cat-scramble for a little gold ? 

Their action was a mystery to me, 
I thought the stars I learned to reverence hold 

Jewels and gold more precious than the sea. 
I thought the never-ending stars were islands 

Set like great flambeaux in life 's dangerous sea, 
Half-way between the soul and heaven's highlands, 

That man might not despair of God's infinity — 
I raised my eyes aloft again. Night reigned. 

The quiet constant stars were in their places. 
Of all the vulgar hubbub that had pained 

My soul there were no longer any traces. 
The heavens had been hidden by a cloud, 

Those coruscations which had given birth 
To my wierd phantasy were but a crowd 

Of rushlights risen from the swampy earth. 
Above me lay the flower-fields of light, 

The galaxy of cities of the sky, 
Whose gates are pearl, the walls of lazulite 

Whose beauties still proclaim, God rules on high. 
I sought my couch, thinking this world 's small-trade 

169 



"Will cheapen jewels of the heavenly hoard 
Only until again by heaven weighed 
And their true mint-marked value is restored." 

"On a bleak hill beside my rambling path 

Covered with sparing grass and heatherbell 
And boulders where the farmer in his math 

Must circumvent and guard his scythe-blade well, 
There in that barren place a group of palaces 

Arose before my eyes and towered high, 
Midst pillar-girded plazas, garnished trellises 

In softly shining splendor to the sky. 
And throngs of happy people homed around 

These charmed premises. And in delight 
And unsought joy they seemed to find profound 

And sweet employment, and their highest height 
Of happiness seemed but to love each other — 

— I looked again and all was swept away. 
Before me stretched the blank and barren heather. 

I spoke to one beside me in dismay, 
''What mystic land is this, that has a double 

Contoured existence to my seeking senses? 
Scarce have I caught the one, when like a bubble 

It disappears with all appurtenances, 

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Like shifting curtains on colossal stages, 

Or like some old palimpsest which between 
Its lines holds ancient half-obscured messages 

Of graver import than those which are seen 
At the first glance. ' ' ' But my companion, thus : 

' ' And so it is ; this is a double world 
And superimposed on that which by us 

Is seen with natural eyes can be unfurled 
Sublimer realms, where soft and sweet content 

Steals o'er the soul its unexpected bliss. 
Or else a region where dejected, bent, 

The spirit grovels in deep wretchedness. 
The vision which thy favored sight beheld 

And those white mansions are the blest abode 
Of some great king who once on earth has dwelt. 

And those who zealously His love have wooed." 
Then quickly I replied ; ' ' The deep impress 

That vision left my mind will never fade, ' 
For never did I see or hear or guess 

That anything so beautiful was made. 
Inform me then how I may ever gain 

"Within those blessed courts my domicile? 
How can I woo and finally attain 

This wondrous, gracious king's consent and will 

171 



To enter there ? ' ' Then my companion sweet : 

"Those who best serve and love their fellowman 
Seem to come nearest His desire to meet, 

And nearest to work out His holy plan. 
But come with me ; I know a rugged knoll 

Quite near and just beyond the palace gate, 
From whence the world is spread out like a scroll ; 

There we will urge the wheels of time and wait 
To see how man through life seeks after these 

Exalted mansions." Soon we found a spot 
Where down life 's valley we could see with ease ; 

We saw the busy life and what it wrought ; 
We saw the race and chase for wealth and gold, 

The dash and clash for standing and for station 
We saw one listening when he was told 

About this King and His blest habitation, 
Constrained by His sweet promises and love 

He took, though wealthy, all his stock and store, 
His jewels rich, his wealth, the product of 

Long years of saving and all these he bore 
Out in the world to serve his fellow-man. 

For so he thought to gain his master 's favor. 
Great gifts he gave, great projects he did plan, 

Bought mercy of the tyrant and the slaver, 

172 



Ransomed the bounden one and with his wealth 

Strewed fullness where before was scarcity, 
Purchased for blind ones sight, for sick ones health, 

For those in darkness light and purity, 
I saw, when all his ample earthly store 

"Was once in gentle acts of mercy spent, 
And he could help the suffering no more. 

Toward the shining gates his steps he bent. 
I saw a bright one at the portals wait. 

Mild-eyed and sweet ; of her he asked kind leave 
That he might enter through the glittering gate 

And there his portion of reward receive. 
But with soul-loving deep solicitude 

The mild-eyed angel answered his desire 
By asking, if he had done all he could 

Or had a further call for something higher 
Than mere alleviation of the needs 

Of outward man. For heaven 's highest merit 
Comes not to him who succors, clothes and feeds 

The starving human body, but the spirit. 
Hundreds of thousands souls the world does hold 

Who have no wealth to give with which to please 
Yet they can find their way within the fold. 

The master said : ' ' She gave more than all these, " 

173 



When He was speaking of the widow 's mite ; 

You have in part loved and served man, 'tis true, 
But man has more than body to keep right ; 

A needy soul to administer to. 
And when the Master said, "My chosen thirst," 

He meant a thirst that we can nowhere slake 
Save where the springs of living waters burst 

Out from the throne of G-od. And when He spake 
Of those in prison, He meant those ill-fated 

Ones whom the career of the soul holds doomed. 
Until they are by grace emancipated. 

And when He said, "My children are consumed 
With hunger, and they languish after food;" 

It was the hunger of the soul He meant ; 
The bread of life to which He did allude. 

And when He said, "My little ones are spent 
In burning fever and in dread disease," 

The Master meant that in their souls they languish, 
That earthly remedies can give no ease ; 

That only He can free them of their anguish." 
The man with sorrow on his loving face 

Mused as he went away, as one who seeks 
Some other resource. Then I saw him place, 

Like one who one last faithful effort makes, 

174 



The strength of his young manhood on the altar. 

He went about and travailed hard to bring 
Some higher good to man. And without falter 

He fought the evil tendencies that cling 
Around the human soul to do it harm. 

He sacrificed his body and his mind 
In shielding others from life 's bitter storm. 

Soul-bondage and injustice could not find 
A single victim if he could prevent. 

At last his health gave way, and broken down 
His footsteps toward the golden gate he bent. 

The mild-eyed one brought out a shining crown 
Of gold and gems ; but he waved it aside 

And said he wished one like his Master wore. 
The angel said, "Not yet. If you abide 

In patience when the test comes to your door. ' ' 
Then the man pleaded : "I need higher aid 

If I shall e 'er attain this blessed goal. ' ' 
I heard him weeping. ' ' Ah, what price is paid 

For the redemption of a single soul! 
Before I never realized the cost 

It takes to bring to heaven and happiness 
A wandering human being that is lost. 

I have not even yet met with success. 

175 



Fond hope surrounded me in the beginning 

And with the sanguine confidence of youth 
I thought that easily I might be winning 

For such a Master and for such a truth 
A goodly number. Then I gave my wealth 

And hoped to see it render good returns, 
And then I tried what all my strength and health 

Could do to win the wilful soul that spurns 
A higher life, and when I had naught left 

I gave my mind, my thought, my speech, every- 
thing. 
That I might warn one heedless of the drift 

To seek and find these mansions of our King. 
And yet I fear that I have sadly failed. 

What more is there that I might do or offer ? " 
The angel said : ' ' That which has e 'er availed 

The most to save a fallen world — Suffer. ' ' 
I saw the man then fall upon his knees, 

Remaining long. He arose and turned away 
To meet the world again. But a deep peace 

Seemed to infuse him with a glowing sway 
Of love and hope ; like one that sought a thing 

Most precious, perseveres uncheered, alone. 
Till unexpectedly some turn will bring 

176 



A pledge that sometime it will be his own; 
So he took heart. I saw him dedicate 

His soul to human service, heard him teach 
In song and words, I heard him supplicate 

Each one alike that they should try to reach 
The shining gates. Those he had heretofore 

Assisted with his labor or with gold 
Were always kind to him, but now no more 

Came sweet respect from all those that he told 
To seek the one thing needful, but some scoffed 

At the sweet voice of his evangelism; 
Laughed him to scorn ; and they assailed him oft 

With sland 'rous insult and fierce criticism. 
And then he learned to bend and bow his head 

And let the waves of hatred o'er it roll, 
He learned the fearful lonesomeness and dread 

When the flood-waters come up to one's soul. 
Again I saw him seek the shining gates 

And like a child seeks comfort from its mother 
He found the mild-eyed angel there that waits 

To open to the soul, who for another 
Has suffered. Now he knew he was redeemed 

By some One 's suffering ; and on the breeze 
Came softest music strains, whose burden seemed 

177 



A thousand blended joys ; and like one flees 
From something that had long held him enslaved 

He ran in through the gate that swung ajar 
And mingled in sweet concourse with the saved, 
Who met him, waving welcome from afar. 
I turned to my companion : ' ' Do all such 

That overcome and reach this blest abode 
Forever dwell therein, no longer touch 

The world or a world-pilgrim's jading load?" 
He straightway answered me : " This is a double 

Existence and a double world, and some 
Do only live the lower life of trouble. 

While others strive the world to overcome 
And find a second world above the lower. 

And though those soul-entrancing tenements 
Above encompass them and the sweet shore 

Affords enjoyment for a heavenly sense, 
Yet can the human life not well escape 

From this its lower life as long as it 
Remains a tenant in this mortal shape ; 

But daily they bring portions of the sweet 
Sumptuous fruitage from the realm divine 

And scatter it among the starving ones 
They meet below ; and in their duty-line 

178 



"Which they pursue among the denizens 
Of earth, they shadow forth their higher life." 

I to my kind instructor : ' ' Is the gall 
And bitterness of earth's mad selfish strife 

No longer able to disturb their soul? 
Or does the hate of earth which so distressed 

The life of him we erstwhile saw, before 
The long-desired mansions he possessed, 

Still harrow them ? ' ' My guide replied : ' * No 
more 
They feel the poisoned shafts of ugly malice ; 

Yet as they come in close contact with pain 
Their hearts are not untouched or cold or callous 

Or even proof to it. And oft they fain 
Would quietly withdraw themselves away 

Into the peaceful solacing retreat 
Of these white mansions which invite alway, 

And to companionship which there they meet. 
Though not exempt from pain, these blest ones hold 

The key to all; brave patience to withstand. 
They are not ruffled by the greed of gold 

The fight for preference on every hand. 
They have learned patience; stronger than the 
sword, 

179 



Patience, that gathers up the broken frays 
Of ruin, of defeat, and twines a cord 

To bind the force that 'gainst our work inveighs. 
Patience, that fans again the dying embers 

Left of a fire that destroyed our treasure 
To burn the heaping sorrow that encumbers 

The riven heart, load-heavy without measure. 
Patience, that reaches out into the dense 

Deep endless night and plants the heaven-adorning 
Star-cluster and with light-creating hands 

Sweeps in the dawning of another morning. 
Patience, the signal sent from heaven's moorage 

That through man's anxious voyage ever gleamed. 
Patience, the token from the cross to encourage 

A faith that by it mankind was redeemed. ' ' 
Then my companion sweet bid me good cheer 

And I went pondering on the gentle plans 
Of God to lift and cherish, and how near 

His heavenly habitations are to man's." 

*'And now," the sage continued, "I am nearing 

A point in my irregular recital 
Where all the stray converging threads are bearing 

Towards a subject, to us seven, vital. 

180 



Long after Rally ceased we sat in silence, 

It seemed we all had reached an open door 
And through the night we saw the wished-for islands 

Of truth which we regarded more and more, 
For which our searching mental vision longed. 

Should we cross over ? Are our efforts worth 
The entry for such prize? The memory thronged 

With long-heard call of voices from the earth. 
With oft-repeated signals from the sky, 

From nature came the thousand mute appeals 
Like silent spirits that are saddened by 

The carelessness which our neglect reveals. 
And above all the crying need of man 

Which eloquently spoke from our heart; 
For ever since the search for truth began 

At every turn sin with its direful art 
Stood in the way. Sin with its blighting touch, 

The poor world's universal heritage, 
The soul's great enemy whose power is such 

That man must never-ceasing warfare wage ; 
And even after a victorious fight 

Must ever keep a watchman at the gates, 
Must keep incessant vigil day and night 

At all its barriers. For outside waits 

181 



Sin, like a lion, to raze the ramparts low, 

Or else perchance in some way find an entrance 
More unobtrusive. Like a lamb might go 

In through an open doorway without hindrance ; 
Or like a sinuous snake might noiselessly 

Below the bottom rail come cra^ding through ; 
Or like a squirrel that with agility, 

So quickly that the eye can not pursue. 
Climbing, springs o 'er the very topmost panel ; 

Or even like a mouse that gnaws a hole 
In secret for itself a hidden channel ; 

So pitiless sin conspires against the soul. 
When on the highway to Benares city 

Some five and twenty hundred years ago 
Buddha was moved to an eternal pity 

At passing sights of suffering and woe. 
The stricken of the plague, decrepit age. 

The sufferers from famine, flood and fire. 
He cast about desiring to assuage 

The woe of countless millions who expire 
In writhing pain. The putrid corpse that lay 

Along the roadside killed by murderous steel 
Suggested to Buddha the painful way 

Of birth and death, rebirth to further ill, 

182 



He saw man endlessly by pain pursued. 

So he his life in meditation spent, 
In which he every source of wisdom wooed 

To find a way by which he could prevent 
The suffering of man. Six hundred years 

Later came One who said, not suffering 
But sin was the chief source of all our tears 
And all our loss. He further taught the thing 
That we most need to conquer is not pain, 

But that which caused our souls to be distorted ; 
Our highest object should be to attain 

Deliverance from sin, although we courted 
And brought upon us pain and persecution. 

The battle of the heart, the overthrow 
Of sin, that is the paramount solution ; 

To sin should all our highest pity go. 
He came and He espoused the thorny crown. 

And all along these nineteen hundred years 
Whene'er His followers would seek renown 

And worldly-minded gain. He disappears 
And shuns the work wherein they take reward 

In worldly adulation or in pleasure. 
And always you will find His work is hard, 

And suffering-fraught, and paid with such a treas- 
ure 

183 



The world would laugh at. Always we must turn 

To lowly, modest, tear-encumbered sources 
To find His true defenders and to learn 

The stronghold and the strength of Christian 
forces. 
Thus at the "Bed-rock" did we seven discuss 

Such questions uppermost in our minds 
Like one who in a forest lost will guess 

His bearing, scan each object, till he finds 
The wished-for path that leads him on his course ; 

So we enlisted all we ever knew 
And we exhausted every thought-of source 

To find some index, some directing clue 
To help us in our life-depending choice. 

Sometimes we wept and in a sort of awe 
Not one of us would deign to raise his voice. 

Or dare to speak the visions that he saw. 
Then Judge spoke out, and he described a scene 

That was the climax to our mental sifting, 
It held a picture of the Nazarene, 

That was the choice toward which our minds were 
drifting. 
Then Rally spoke in prayer directed to 

The object of our choice, and his words came 

184 



As though we all had spoken them, as though 

From but one heart : " Christ, we love thy name, 
Although thy warriors display no trophy 

Of warlike fame or earth-born victory. 
Thy poet does not sing a single strophe 

That has the ring of martial heraldry. 
But pierced are Thy hands that healed and blessed. 

Thy body bears the stripes of one chastised, 
And all these wrongs to Thee go unredressed. 

Although they spat upon Thee and despised 
Thy life and work and utterly rejected, 

And pushed Thee out into death's cruel realm. 
And all the bitterness of earth collected 

Its venom to engulf and overwhelm 
Thy soul. Although Thy followers one by one 

Forsook Thee, fearful or ashamed to own 
A fallen master whose career seemed done. 

Whose cherished hard-won work seemed over- 
thrown. 
Although the hopes Thy loved ones held were 
blighted, 

Thy yearning love which o 'er the human race 
Hovered like mother-love was ill requited 

And earthly failure stared Thee in the face. 

185 



Although the edifice which had been reared 

By them, with love's ambition and with prayer. 
Was razed to ruins and Thy enemies jeered 

In mockery and derision their despair ; 
Although Thou drankst the dregs of human hate 

And had a taste of utter desolation, 
Till there was nothing left that could create 

Earthly desire or earthly inspiration: 
Yet do we take Thee as our chosen king ; 

And here upon our bended knees we offer 
Our fealty and homage, and we bring 

Our willingness to meet and bear and suffer 
For heaven-victories all this earth-defeat. 

Hail to our humble sovereign of woe ! 
Thee with tear-mingled hosannas we greet, 

Thy banners on the earth are trailing low, 
The place to lay Thy head is oft the couch 

Of poor maltreated, outcast refugees 
Where in the shadows threatening figures crouch 

To rob Thee even of such stinted ease. 

Th}^ kingdom has no earthly boundary, 

No bastioned walls encircle Thy domain; 
Exposed to onslaughts of the enemy 

Thy martyrs languish and expire in pain. 

186 



No pomp or glitter marks Thy regal throne 

On earth, but only sacrifice and loss 
Are its foundation. Even when Thy own 

With earthly splendor would adorn Thy cause, 
Thy faithful ones desert a thing perverted 

And seek in silence on a stranger shore 
A humbler shrine where quiet and God-girted 

They strive Thy meek heart-kingdom to restore. 
No shout of time-diverting revelers 

Can e'er supplant the eryings after God; 
And sad and earnest sweep Thy travelers 

Up the blood-mantled steeps which Thou hast trod. 
Yet some unbounded sweetness of Thy love 

Constrains us to accept Thee as our Lord. 
For when sin weighed us down through Thee above 

Was sweet forgiveness in our hearts restored. 
We knoAV Thou dost forgive for we have tasted, 

We know One who forgives does also love 
The object, else forgiveness would be wasted, 

With all the purposes for which it strove. 
Yet have we chosen Thee as our own Lord. 

We choose the sweetness interspersed between 

The pangs of pain and grief this earth can bring, 
The hidden joy that unannounced, unseen 

187 



Comes and makes suffering sweet. We choose the 
bliss 

That comes to one while being swept away 
By the great deluge of iniquities 

Whose ravages he tries to stem and stay. 
We choose Thee Lord from glamour's fleeting glow 

From all the lures of life which urge and taunt 
Us with their glittering transitory show, 

From all of which earth's eloquence can vaunt, 
From all the soul can dream of wealth and power, 

The pleasing flush of flattery or fame, 
The sweet soft adulation of the hour, 

From all these, Lord, we choose Thee and Thy 
name. 
Life, Love, God, Thou who dost fill 

Time's ever-passing, ever-changing shores, 
Thou who dost in the deep space-reaches dwell 

And the vast star-depths are Thy corridors. 
Hear us, we pray, for here we make our choice." 

Thus surging from his bosom came the prayer, 
And more than words spoke from his throbbing 

voice, 
A pent up earnestness, a sincere care. 
And there at the ''Bed-rock" same to us seven 

188 



Something that I can not describe or utter, 
But we could hear the orchestra of heaven, 

And all around us seemed the joyous flutter 
Of wafting wings. Like when John Wesley's band 

Of students seeking for a deeper grace 
Found grace in rich abundance right at hand 

Seeking for them, desiring their embrace. 
Or like the straggling band at pentecost 

Met praying, fearing He, whom they believed 
And walked with, would forever now be lost. 

With inexpressible joy were undeceived. 
So we who sought the Truth with doubts and tears 

Discovered that she claimed us as her own. 
That she had trailed our footsteps through the years. 

That she had wept because we were so prone. 
That she anticipated our salvation 

And like a distant friend to whom we yearn 
To go, making extensive preparation 

Toward our journey^ also in his turn 
Has greater love and meets us at our door. 

So came this inextinguishable joy. 
Welling into our hearts as naught before 

Had ever done, until it seemed to cloy 
And overflow our unaccustomed soul 

189 



"With an inexplicable happiness 
Not of this earth. It seemed as if the whole 

Creation shared this love, this joy and bliss. 
And then our duty lay before us; clear 

And well mapped-out now lay our future route. 
We saw the truth in vivid light — but here." — 

The old sage scanned the youth that sat about 
Him listening, in the Philomaethean hall; 

The evening sun in horizontal rays 
Streamed in and threw a glad glow over all 

And bathed the students in a mellow blaze. 
"But here," the sage continued, "I appeal 

To our pact, I need not tell my views 
And by our compromise I may conceal 

Those which I deem to be the highest Truths. 
Yet will I keep my word and in the sequel 

Must briefly tell you how it was that fear 
And love of life did render me unequal 

To meet the brunt of it and persevere. 
Yes, we were sanguine and we loved our cause 

And we had laid our all upon the altar, 
"We promised that without reserve or pause. 

We humbly vowed that without fear or falter 
Our earnest efforts should be consecrated 

190 



And used to help the cause we had espoused 
Nor should we shrink or blench if we are hated, 

Nor fear if opposition is aroused. 
Thus like strong swimmers brave the rugged sea 

Throwing themselves into the briny wave 
That shipwrecked ones in the extremity 

Of their last grasp for life they yet might save ; 
So in life's buffeting sea we soon got scattered 

And each one was on his own task intent 
And some brought precious freightage spume-be- 
spattered 

Out of the maw of death 's own element. 
So was the plunge initial of these seven, 

And nobly did they strike out from the shore. 
A short account of each could now be given 

That you may know the battlescars they wore. 
Mark this, and love to you the more abounds 

Here in the lengthening shadows of my age, 
There is a field of war on spiritual grounds 

Where sharply drawn eternal combats wage ; 
Espouse but once the cause of truth and right, 

'Tis then you step into the firing line 
And have enlisted in this mortal fight, 

That rages on the trail to heights divine. 

191 



'Tis not a war of carnage and of gore, 

You do not even try to wound your foe 
'Tis not your sheets of lead, your cannon's roar, 

That makes your enemy rage and bluster so, 
'Tis but your quiet entering in the lists. 

The wearing of the colors that he hates, 
The standing for the cause that he resists, 

The opposition that your life creates. 
The fearless human being who would hew 

Close to the chalk-line that our God has struck, 
Who without veer or vary would pursue 

A true straight course, and would not cringe or 
truck 
To all the thousand influences tending 

To lead off either to the right or left, 
To all the sweet-voiced favors that are bending 

Their alluring powers to draw him with the drift, 
I say, if such undeviating course 

With strictness were pursued without a flinch 
That life would be, aye, even from its source 

A straight line leading to the martyr's bench. 
Yea, even in these vaunted modern times 

When faggot-flame and cross are out of date, 
Man still finds means to perpetrate his crimes 

192 



And methods to work out his rankling hate. 
Two things astound me : Love, the infinite love 

Of God, and hate, the appalling hate of man. 
But hate is ever the prer ursor of 

Great woe to him who hates. And through the 
plan 
Or man's redemption is the purpose running 

That he should find a milder heart and break 
Away from this inveterate hate, thus shunning 

The suffering that follows in its wake. 
Averting thus the crippling of the soul. 

As poison will cause persons to inherit 
A dwarfed and stunted body, death and dole, 

So, hate deforms and stunts and dulls the spirit, 
And brings a double woe that e 'er will stay 

With him who has directed it to fall, 
Though it reach not its purpose. By the way 

No sweeter peace-note came from heaven's wall 
Than recently when the United States 
With Mexico in trouble were involved 
And in the face of ugly jingo traits 

By noble statesmen Christianly were solved. 
When nation will regard as Christian brother 

Each other nation and will treat it so 

193 



Willing to bear like Christians with each other 

The humanization of the world will grow. 
But to resume my purpose and relate 

In brief the further history of my theme ; 
Ghice sped headlong and sure toward his fate, 

He never brooked the flimsy world of seem, 
And many he led on to a higher striving 

And many he opposed. With prayers and tears 
He tilled his chosen field, often depriving 

Himself that he might sow for future years. 
But having like the Baptist criticised 

Some people that were high up, as they say. 
They turned against him, wrongfully devised 

Some slanderous tales, published them in a way 
That made it seem that they were very loath 

To tell the truth, though it was never true. 
No one knows like he who defames, the growth 

Of lies, the sure returns if he but strew 
The insidious seeds, if he but persevere. 

So Ghice 's worthy name was undermined 
And his own friends turned from him with a sneer 

Or with feigned sorrow-words, the more unkind. 
And then he suffered, suffered the deep pierce 

Of guileless hearts branded with laming shame; 

194 



Suffered assaults, he thought none could be fierce 

Or cruel enough to perpetrate the same, 
Until at length infinite patience came 

To shield his soul from hate 's exhaustless quiver. 
But to the sensitive man's fragile frame 

The shafts had done their work. Down with a 
fever 
He never rose again. No martyr sleeps 

In ancient catacomb or hallowed crypt 
That has a higher claim. Righteousness weeps 

O'er such in copious tears. The fate of Script 
Was kinder, though it was equally tragic. 

He learned the art to help men and could read 
Their soul or body-want, and as by magic 

He was at hand and with his old time speed 
Allayed and succored. Once a fire broke out 

In some old crowded building ripe for flame. 
Heroic work was done. There was a shout 

That three were yet unsaved, cut off. Script came, 
He never asked a question, spoke a word, 

But like a flame himself he leaped right through 
And in the flames he perished with the third 

After he had rescued the other two. 
And Wax, he found his work in a large city 

195 



"Where life and joy and beauty are congested, 
"Where suffering too and crime engaged his pity, 

"Where the real timber of a man is tested. 
"Withal he was imprudent and his acts 

Invited martyrdom, for he was prone 
To hurl the naked biting unkempt facts 

Into the enemy's face. And all alone 
And single handed he would brave and beard 

The monster of untruth and hurl defiance 
Into his very teeth. He never feared. 

Tall, agile, strong with faith and God-reliance 
He made a leader where it was required 

To fight an evil. By the very stand 
He took, incipient evils were retired 

Ere they were born and bold ones hid their hand. 
Once when some crying public shame was told 

That there was law they found a stiff resistance 
For it was backed by trade-clubs and by gold. 

'Twas run by hired tools and in the distance 
"Watching the prey to enter and entangle 

Itself were they who swiped the profits in, 
Some that would come to church in silks and 
spangles 

Bought with the money realized from sin. 

196 



As in the night a tempest stealthily steals 

Up in the sky with rumbling thunder-flights 
Increasing suddenly to heavy peals, 

And shaft and sheet of lightning glares and smites 
The crass and heavy darkness, so this leader ; 

He fearlessly exposed them in the courts, 
And even a biased court had to consider 

The clinching evidence, the gross reports. 
And "Wax and his reformers won the day. 

But something happened that experienced 
Men thought not of. Those that received the pay 

Of the nefarious traffic had incensed 
Their creatures so and in their hearts created 

Such sentiment it could not be controlled 
And that same night their fury unabated 

Broke over Wax and he lay dead and cold. 
Now Mute, he was a man of milder mould 

He had a gift of teaching that is rare, 
He offered to the world the heavenly gold 

That was entrusted to his watchful care. 
And as a light-house throws its helpful light 

Across the night-enveloped billowy sea 
And with a ray of hope inspires the fight 

Of struggling seamen in distress, so he. 

197 



He, through the books he wrote, acquired fame 

And he became so noted that the great 
Vouch-safed to honor his illustrious name. 

Then he was called by Princes of the State 
To act as their adviser: he fulfilled 

This mission with much grace and excellent sense. 
But they had other counsellors. To build 

Your fortunes in a king's environments 
Is both replete with grace and jeopardy 

And as Mute's fame increased, so did his danger, 
And the old throne-courtiers in jealousy 

Combined their influence to oust this stranger 
Who had insinuated, as they claimed. 

Himself into the Prince's grace by reason 
Of self -planned purposes. So they inflamed 

The ignorant classes with the cry of treason. 
And Mute went down although the Prince well knew 

There never was a grain of treason in 
This man. For Mute tried always to imbue 

The world with love of good and hate of sin. 
Thus when truth beckons, when light fain would 
flood 

The world, then evil men will come in might 
And nip the promising blossom in the bud, 

198 



Delay Christ 's day, prolong the morbid night. 
"Woe to the world that speeds to self-destruction; 

Of old it stoned the prophets that were sent. 
"Woe to the man of sin that flouts instruction 

And hastens e'er recurring punishment. 
I come to Rally now, the best of all. 

Preaching the gospel was his chosen calling, 
He struck his tents within the sacred wall 

Of prayer and love. To those around him falling 
And needing guidance he brought such up-cheer, 

As when to one that gropes along his way 
In densest darkness, all at once a clear 

And star-lit sky shows up, and dawn and day. 
His words brought comfort like when barren drouth 

Rests on the earth and plants will wither 
And blossoms droop, and creatures with their mouth 

Are gasping up to heaven, and the weather 
Then quickly changing brings abundant rain, 

Brings back the joy of life and growth and bloom 
Until the seed-plants thrive to growing grain. 

The flowers spend their long withheld perfume, 
And slowly swells the fragrance-flavored fruit. 

And everything breathes in the earth's reborn, 
Rebaptised life : so did the words of Mute, 

199 



Untrammeled from life's bitterness and scorn, 
Pall on a suffering, world-famished heart. 

He had a gift to clearly show the road 
To higher planes of life. He knew the art 

Man's heaven-hunger to arouse and goad. 
But he, too, found his enemies. They guessed 

The trend of truths which he so much extolled 
Was counter-action to their world 's behest, 

And quiet truth cuts deeper than the bold. 
When truth sets up her standard, falsehoods come 

With ruthless hands to hamper or to mar 
Or sneakingly contrive to detract from 

Its worth, or its good influence to bar. 
And though the truth will stand, its advocates 

Will oft go down. Wlien falsehood can't devise 
Derogatory things or find some traits 

About a life like Rally's to criticise 
Then it will slink around and sniff the air. 

Will -pry into his house and home, patrol 
His comings and his goings everywhere, 

And draAv a cordon all around his soul 
With meshes such as these: "He has no reason 

To carry himself different from us ; 
His godliness is not in proper season ; 

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He throws us in a bad reflection thus ; 
The world is good and by his unique action 

He says that it is not ; He is too good 
To live and that itself is an infraction 

That merits death. ' ' And on the streets they would, 
In passing him, thus give vent to their hate : 

"I hope he'll go to heaven where he belongs" 
''His funeral would be appropriate." 

But Rally knew the world and all its wrongs 
And heeded not. Their jibes, they touched him not. 

He knew and pitied that they only seared 
The heart that bore them, that they only wrought 

Their havoc where they were begot and reared. 
Once he contracted a malign disease 

While, heedless of himself, he helped to nurse 
Some poor afflicted ones and bring them ease. 

Reeover,y delayed and he grew worse 
And worse, and in his early, useful years 

"When yet much undone labor seemed to wait, 
Heaven removed him to the higher spheres, 

Perhaps to save him from a sterner fate. 
I come to Judge, the shrewdest of us seven. 

At casual glance he seemed a worldly man. 
One versed in worldly arts; but deeply scriven 

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On his deep hidden soul another plan 
Was the chief impulse of his entity. 

A warning voice like that the gentle son 
Of Sophroniscus ever heard when he 

Approached the danger mark that he must shun 
Was ever present, ready to apprise 

Judge of the true effects his acts produced. 
He reasoned that it would not be quite wise 

To die before one-half his life was used. 
Like when a prudent swimmer in the waves 

Helps one from drowning, takes the proper 
caution 
For his own life as well as that he saves, 

So both might 'scape the death-embrace of ocean. 
Or like a prudent husbandman that spends 

His health and powers charily and life 
To him is precious, for on it depends 

The keeping of his children and his wife ; 
So Judge lived cautiously, his words were couched 

In terms ambiguous, with double meaning 
But hid behind his worldly wisdom crouched 

The prized truth. Like servant who is screening 
His master's jewels from the public gaze 

Of greedy eyes, and covers them with dross 

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That he may have them in the future days 

That he may use them in his master's cause. 
And he lived long and prospered. The world 
thought 

That he in his maturer days would yield 
To all the selfish objects which they sought. 

They knew not what his secret life revealed. 
And yet they saw that wealth did not enchain 

His heart, not did vain pride find an abode. 
His actions formed a straight and tangent line 

To their self-centered, cramped and crooked code. 
The reason that his actions counter ran 

With theirs, was that the motive and the source 
Was different from the selfish worldly plan 

That formed the mainspring of their inner course. 
And Judge liked not their insincerity. 

Some pseudo-christians of the popular kind 
At last turned on him, and they charged that he 

Was skeptical, and learning made him find 
No good in any one except himself. 

And Judge replied : " I always held that learning 
Or lack of it can never bridge the gulf 

That yawns between the soul and higher yearning. 
To make that crossing all mankind is leveled; 

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And no man, though he be fool, need err. 
I think the narrow Christian path is traveled 

By more unlearned earnest souls who were 
Redeemed than b^^ the great and wise of earth. 

But none are barred ; Christ took so broad a view 
That he saw naught in man but the real worth 

Of an aspiring soul. The trappings, too, 
That cling around us such as class or station, 

Position, knowledge, talent, wealth or lot, 
Or any church or lodge affiliation, 

Before him vanished as if they were not. 
Not only has each one an equal chance 

To be possessor of the heavenly treasure, 
But high or low, wisdom or ignorance 

Possessing once, enjoys in equal measure. 
This is the stamp-mark of the Saviour 's plan ; 

This is the broad provision that He made ; 
The universal refuge-place for man, 

"Where he can tarry, safe and unafraid." 
But when once jealous persons seek for causes 

To blame, they'll blame a lamb with treachery. 
If Judge had said, that snow is white, or, roses 

Are sweet, they would have called it heresy. 
For one wiJl say, that he half-way suspicioned, 

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Another, that he heard or saw or knew — 
There is no combination so efficient 

As when unitedly they choose to spew 
Their poisonous slander at some brother's door. 

And many henceforth looked at Judge askance. 
He had been honored by the king, and more, 

Had been a tutor in the residence 
Of royalty. But now the tongues went babbling 

And calumny like disconcerted geese 
Hither and thither flew hissing and gabbling. 

The things that they accused him of were these : 
That he had taught the young prince theories 

That were pernicious to his youthful mind ; 
That he had always taught strange infamies. 

Judge knew his fate had finally fallen. Resigned 
And brave, he faced the bribeless price of Truth. 

He knew that this would bring him little pain 
Since he had looked for it and in his youth 

Had chosen it. Why should he now complain? 
His life was spared, but he was banished thence 

To be an exile on an alien shore ; 
Where long, long days he scanned the wide expanse 

Of sky and sea. He learned to read the roar 
Of waters and their whisperings and sighs ; 

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He listened to their moan and understood 
Their surging restlessness, their smothered cries, 

And all the threnodies of wind and flood. 
But they touched not the peace within his soul. 

For fiercer than the loud-resounding sea 
Had tempests broken on his own heart's shoal; 

And darker than the sea's night revelry 
Are struggles of the human heart for light. 

And sadder is the call for fleeting pleasure 
That the wild sobbing of the sea at night. 

And sweetness came to Judge in fullest measure 
And lisping voices from another shore 

Flowed to him on the laughter of the sea. 
But now he feels life's banishment no more, 

Death's commutation came and set him free." 

" — Now I alone am left." The old sage wept. 

The door of the old Philomaethean hall 
Then suddenly opened and through it stepped 

A child that made the musing students all 
Exclaim by reason of her wondrous beauty. 

Suppressed in her large eyes there flashed a storm 
Upbraiding and reminding them of duty. 

And when her glance fell on the aged form 

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She sprang to him and put her arms around him 

In anxious joy, as if she long was vexed 
And, seeking, long had worried till she found him. 
Like some embodied spirit-angel followed 
The mazes of a wavering human soul. 

Until, constrained by love, its anxious, hallowed 
Home-bearing hands may lead it to its goal; 

So seemed the girl. Then turning quick, defiant 
With her deep-meaning eyes, she made them quail 

And own her sovereignty. All humble, pliant. 
Obeyed her love-moved will. And to this frail 

Sweet, love-inspiring guardian came the students 
And for forgiveness each one bowed. But she 

Fixed on his cloak with fond motherly prudence 
And bore him off in triumph and in glee. 




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